TOI Kerala's new campaign portrays God's own traffic jam

The Times of India Kerala edition has rolled out a new TVC to complete its launch campaign. The TVC, created by JWT India, depicts a satirical celebration of the competitive spirit of Malayalees.

The TVC shows a typical day in the life of Kerala albeit from a TOI perspective. Opening on the T junction of Kerala's backwaters, the film highlights the verve of competition. You behold roosters, fishermen, Kalari martial art warriors, footballers, Kathakali dancers, Pulikali (tiger painted dancers); each fighting with its counterpart. We see boats colliding, fishermen tossing their nets while sitting on the edge of the boats, thereby adding to the chaos building up. In no time there is a traffic jam caused by the boats on the backwaters and people use this stuck boats as makeshift bridge to cross over. Amidst all the action, a policeman enters on another boat to escalate the traffic situation and the film ends with the sun setting on the backwaters.

Commenting on the brief for this campaign, Senthil Kumar, national creative director, JWT India, said, "Post the 'God's Own Delivery Boys' launch campaign in February and the Times Kerala festival of music videos with Kerala's popular musicians, dancers and the malayalam rock band Avial singing Suprabtham Keralam; it was time to take the campaign forward and create a film that captures the current state of Kerala and bring alive the competitive spirit of the modern malayalee. Also it was imperative to create a film that signs of with 'a day in the life of Kerala'  like what we did with Naaka Mukka for Chennai."

Unplugged moments:
Kumar shared anecdotes from the shoot which was wound up within two days. He said, "We literally lived on a houseboat and travelled the backwaters with the camera crew shooting most of the stuff in a very newsreel documentary style production. We did spot a few natural traffic jams happening on the backwaters. Nowhere else in the world will you spot a traffic jam on a river so often, like in the winding backwaters of Kerala. So just like any good newspaper should, we ended up capturing fresh real life stories that would make the Next days headlines."

He added that the same team that worked on this campaign had created the 'naaka mukka' film for TOI that won India's first and second Gold Lions in Film & Film Craft at Cannes Lions Festival in 2009.

Kumar also shared how they finalised the background score for the film. He said, "We tried three different music tracks but we were not happy until we encountered Kerala's own folk rockstar - Kalabhavan Mani, a genius who is responsible for the revival of the ancient Naadam Paatu folk singing tradition of Kerala. The lyrics in malayalam captured the competitive spirit of the malayalee in a fresh and musical form. We played the track to a few Malayalees and sure enough, we got a dancing ovation."
 

Credits:

Client: Times of India
Agency: JWT India 
Chief creative officer: Bobby Pawar
Writer, creative director: Senthil Kumar
Director : Shashanka Chaturvedi [ Bob ]
Director of photography: Jason West, John Jacob Payapalli
Production house:  Good Morning Films