theIdeaWorks sells Incredible India at Davos

Payal Khandelwal, 03 February, 2009

Mumbai

After Incredible! India@60 in New York, theIdeaWorks has created another Incredible India campaign for the India Brand Equity Foundation and India Tourism for telecastlive coverage of WEF's (World Economic Forum) annual meeting at Davos on the ten global feeds of Bloomberg TV.

The agency has created a series of twelve 30 second TV commercials. The films feature personalities such as Kamal Nath (commerce minister), Nandan Nilekani (Infosys), Sunil Mittal (Bharti), WIM Elfrink (Cisco), Martin Dlouhy (METRO Cash & Carry India), Anand Mahindra (Mahindra & Mahindra) and Chanda Kochhar (ICICI Bank).

The idea of each film was to connect one value/facet of contemporary India with an individual or the organisation that he or she represented.

Says Amit Shahi, CEO and co-founder, theIdeaWorks,  "In an atmosphere that was to be dominated by discussions centred around the economic meltdown, we were asked to create positive communication woven around real, tangible and demonstrable successes and opportunities. Hence, the strategy of identifying individual and organisations that identified best with attributes and emergent reality of contemporary India. We were asked to create communication which had "distinct economy and business undertones" while clothed in Incredible India imagery."

He adds, "Also, in the aftermath of 26/11, India tourism wanted to send a clear message about India being a welcoming culture which was not "a soft state". Thus, we had print ads that showed a tiger with an apt quote from Mahatma Gandhi and three outdoor messages on buses, two played on India's resilience and one on India's young population for whom life continued to be a celebration irrespective of the gloom in the world."

The campaign is conceptualised by Amit Shahi, Yateesh Srivastava, CMO, Aegon Religare Life Insurance and Chanchal Sanyal, director, QED Communications. The cinematography is done by Aseem Mishra of Headroom Films.