Think Tank Queen

A few years ago, HBL launched a massive campaign to introduce its credit cards. The campaign traced the origins of money back to the days of the barter system, transitioning through several stages to show how credit cards were the most current form of currency (hence the tagline, “Its current, its currency”).

Such was the soundness of the concept that it immediately became the talk of the industry, all the more so, because it was conceived and executed by a small creative hotshop (for that’s what people thought of it at the time) called Think Tank.

Enter Nagina Faruque, the brains behind the campaign and Think Tank.

Entrepreneur, creative director and super mom all rolled into one, Faruque is a class act when it comes to juggling her professional and personal life. How else would you describe someone, who within a span of two weeks released the HBL campaign and gave birth to her second daughter? Talk about commitment!

Commitment and enthusiasm are qualities that Faruque possesses in spades, coupled with a passion for advertising (and most other things in life) that is positively infectious.

The story of her career begins in the 80s when she went to Stevens College in the US to study economics but came back as an art major with a minor in art history, after realising that she had too many arts credits.

At 21, Faruque took up her first job at SASA Advertising with Shehzad Ahmed Shah, (known as Lal Mian to his friends and colleagues). Her ambition was to become an art director, but you would never have guessed it if you had seen her then for she spent her first four to six months at SASA sitting by the art director’s side sharpening the point of his pencil.

This may seem like a waste of time to young creatives now, but it was a period of great learning for the young Faruque, who watched the master craftsman at work, writing out entire fonts by hands, carefully pasting each letter on to ad layouts and airbrushing the ads to finalise them.

After her initial months by the art director’s side, she tried her hand at everything from radio spots to major presentations, because as she says, Lal Mian trusted his employees immensely, and gave them the opportunity to do everything.

The next twist came when Faruque met Anwar Rammal at the now legendary Ad Asia ’89 in Lahore. Rammal offered her a position at Asiatic Advertising (now JWT Pakistan) and she joined as junior creative manager in the early 90s.

She didn’t make it to Creative Director at Asiatic – “that was Rammal sahib’s job, and even though I wanted it he wasn’t willing to give it to me” – but she spent 10 years there working on the agency’s biggest brands (Lux, Sunsilk, Close Up, American Express were all part of her portfolio).

“The hours were ridiculous, but the growth was phenomenal and I was given the respect and latitude to do what I wanted; no one ever questioned my decisions,” she says.

It is unclear why Faruque left Asiatic but one his left with the impression that perhaps she was uncomfortable with, or unwilling to make some of the changes that would have been necessary when the agency was transitioning towards becoming JWT. She merely says (rather cryptically I might add) that “the Asiatic I joined was not the JWT I left.”

After having spent a little over a decade in advertising, Faruque decided to quit the industry, and did so for all of 24 hours, after which she was emotionally blackmailed by a friend into going for an interview, and eventually ended up with a job at Orient McCann Erickson (now Orient Advertising).

At Orient, Faruque made finally made it to Creative Director, bringing with her several former clients (Reckitt Benckiser and Gillette among others) and a former colleague called Najam, who would later become her husband. She decided to commit to the agency for exactly one year and she stayed true to her word and quit a year later to establish Think Tank with another former colleague, called Adnan but with no accounts to speak of.

“People told us we should open the agency and they would bring in their business, but no such thing happened, and we realised very quickly not to depend on promises.”

Business did eventually come from companies such as Phoenix Armour and ICI, and then they had a big break with PICIC Commercial Bank, which gave Think Tank enough volume in terms of billing to be able to apply for and gain an APNS accreditation.

Like most mothers she alternates between worrying about spending enough time with her daughters, and figuring out how to take the take the batteries out of them. She speaks with great honesty about her sleepless nights and her frustrations, but is happy about being able to build something for her children.

Yet on the personal front, Faruque’s life was in turmoil as her mother-in-law had been diagnosed with cancer and required round the clock care. Tough as this was, she says that Adnan really came through for her, cutting her enough slack to enable her to juggle work and family.

Just as she had come though one crisis, another one was in the offing. She had only just managed to bag HBL and was busy at work on the credit card campaign (in addition to being pregnant), when Adnan announced his decision to bow out of the business. Faruque bought out his shares, called on her husband Najam (whom she calls her knight in shining armour) for help and eventually managed to release the campaign and have her baby. In the process, Think Tank also made the transition from creative hotshop to full fledged advertising agency.

Successful though the HBL campaign may have been, the bank eventually sacked Think Tank in favour of an agency with an international affiliation. This, however, has not compelled Faruque or her husband (who is now her business partner as well) to seek out bigger clients or affiliations.

“With clients,” she says, “it’s not so much about money, as it is about trust and integrity. Most clients believe that agencies are out to make a fast buck but that just isn’t true because we don’t want to put our name on bad work.”

But, she concedes, bad work does sometimes have to be put out when there are bills to be paid. The hours are still erratic, her daughters are at the office quite often and she and Najam “pull nights” regularly. The beauty of having their own place is “being able to decide what we want, and we only want to bite as much as we can chew.”

Like most mothers she alternates between worrying about spending enough time with her daughters, and figuring out how to take the take the batteries out of them. She speaks with great honesty about her sleepless nights and her frustrations, but is happy about being able to build something for her children.

And she is quite content with the controlled growth that Think Tank has seen in the last few years, pointing out that it has gone from being “two people who couldn’t afford the rent to 12 people who can afford it.”

When I ask whether this is enough to compete with the 100 plus other advertising agencies out there, she responds:

“I can’t compete in terms of size, but there is no shortage of talent, ethics and good business practices at Think Tank.”