Yesterday day marked our first industry visit and we started off with a bang: Wieden + Kennedy India. In the U.S., W+K’s client list is a who’s who of A-List brands. Nike, Target, Levi’s, Old Spice, Chrysler/Dodge and P&G are just a few of these brands and the list goes on and on.
In the Delhi office, W+K services eight brands including India Tourism, IndiGo Air, Motherland magazine, Royal Enfield, Chevrolet, eBay India, The Park Hotels and the agency’s newsiest client, Heineken. Sunaina Gupta delivered a phenomenal presentation showcasing the agency’s work. Perhaps the most globally recognizable W+K Indian campaign is the “Incredible India” campaign developed in response to a dwindling Indian tourism industry. In Branding India, Amitabh Kant states that Indian tourism needed to develop a strong identity that incorporated India’s special attributes and create a definable profile. Kant writes, “the vision was to produce a clear identity, a unique brand, which would revive all marketing strategies. It would pervade all forms of communication and stimulate the travel consumer’s [behavior] and decision-making processes to competitively position India in the global market place”. As a result, the “Incredible India” campaign was launched in October 2002. After the campaign’s initial development at Oglivy & Mather, W+K took over the Incredible India campaign in 2008.
In Sunaina Gupta’s presentation, we saw first-hand how W+K produced great advertising by delivering messages that evoke emotion instead of just show it. W+K’s work speaks for itself serving as an “aesthetic pleasure machine” that pushes marketers out of their comfort zone with provocative advertising that truly speaks to the rich cultural heritage of this remarkable country.
An example of one of W+K powerful cultural campaigns is India Tourism’s 2008 “Incredible India” campaign. In this campaign, W+K featured the experiences of those who visited India as tourist and decided to stay in India to make it their homeland. The stories are strong and powerful and really get to the cultural roots of India and the people who live here.
