"It is good to have an end to journey toward;
but it is the journey that matters, in the end."
- Urusala K. LeGuin
Team ImagiNation could not agree more… for our journey of team was indeed splendid. All the teams under ImagiNation, i.e., Strategy Team, Market Research, Creative Team, Execution Team and Marketing Team, played an indispensable part in making the project a reality.
Team ImagiNation’s core idea of making India a sensory destination – where a visitor could use all his five senses, and not just an exotic visual destination - a country of monuments. We believe that the Incredible India campaign had primarily promoted the monuments and the exotic locales and had largely ignored our rich and varied cultural offerings.
The Strategy Team gave us direction and vision. They came up with an initial draft of the way forward (enclosed) which was refined as our collective campaign direction evolved.
The Market Research Team did exceptionally well to back up our ideas with a lot of substance with their solid research work at all stages of the campaign development – conception, execution and measurement. We conducted a primary survey which surveyed foreign nationals on their perception about India. Demographic data was also obtained from the survey like the age, occupation, budget and duration for a holiday and the perception about India. We conducted a secondary research on the nationalities visiting India the most. From our analysis, we found that the trend of foreign exchange earnings and tourist arrivals has been on the rise over the years with the growth in visitors from the USA, Canada and Australia being splendid. The Creative Team's most significant contribution was branding the campaign and deciding the media plan.
The NM teaser campaign and the subsequent event launch saw the Design team’s creativity reach its zenith. The various posters depicting scenes from across the country surely titillated the five senses, be it dance, music, food, jewelry or simply the image of a warm Indian welcome! The Marketing Team did their job by spreading our good word by strategically placing the posters in the campus for generating maximum eyeballs and curiosity. This was followed by the event ‘Have you done it yet’ conducted on the first day of the cultural fest at NMIMS, ‘Fahrenheit’. To test the efficacy of the Campaign launch conducted, the target audience was surveyed.
We did a detailed state wise analysis and tried to find out the cultural art forms present in each one of them (Design Team). We also did an in-depth study of the various institutions with which we could tie up for promoting the various cultural art / skill forms (Marketing Team). The rationale behind researching the states and the institutions was to understand whether we could offer our guests customized packages over the internet and also, to use the data effectively in the media which would be the backbone of our campaign - the Internet.
Our major emphasis was on exploiting the internet (through our website – imagination.com) for promoting our campaign. The advantages of using this media are many-fold. The Internet, apart from imparting complete information about India and the campaign, would also help in promoting tourism. The website would offer customized packages under the package selector tab for visitors depending on the state that they wanted to visit and the experience that they wanted to savour.
Air India and Tantra would be prospected to support our campaign by co-branding with us. Both these co-branding efforts would be revenue generators. While Air India, the nation’s official airlines would fly in the tourists, Tantra, with its whacky, creative designs yet distinct Indian flavour, would capture the essence of our campaign for all visitors to remember. The website would also capture the experiences of visitors by way of promoting social forums, discussions and blogs. Various other media like print, TV Advertisements and road shows would be utilized to promote the campaign. With the right use of media at the right phase of the campaign and with the active participation of team Imagination, the campaign would be a huge success which would benefit the tourism industry, thereby revamping the overall image of India.
Our journey has come to an end… for now – but, the collective dream remains – we hope to promote our cultural offerings effectively through a campaign in the real world – and for that, we have miles to go before we sleep.
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The credit for this writeup goes entirely to Rohit Singh. Well written Rohit and hats off to all 29 members of Team ImagiNation :) - We rocked guys!
PS - if anyone has photos of the presentation, please mail them to me.