Incredible India: When public sector advertising turned savvy

By M H Ahssan

If the recent Lok Sabha elections are any proof, then no matter how great an advertising agency is and how lavishly the client spends, there is always a sarkaari look to public sector advertising.

Small wonder when the Incredible India campaign was launched, it came as a welcome change from the fuddy-duddy public sector advertising.

The man at the centre of the campaign is Amitabh Kant, who was a joint secretary in the tourism ministry then. He is also the one to have steered the 'God's Own Country' campaign for Kerala for several years.

In his recent book, Branding India -- An Incredible Story, Kant chronicles the story of Incredible India, one of the most awarded and successful destination campaigns worldwide.

Kant begins with the domestic tourism scenario in the backdrop of the 9/11 attacks in the US in 2001. It was a time when tour operators thought there was nothing that could boost consumer demand.

"Global tourism saw a sharp decline... countries like Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia had sharply cut their advertising, promotion and marketing budgets," he writes.

Kant points out that till 2002, India had opened 18 tourism offices abroad, yet none of these gave a clear and singular positioning for India. "One foreign office called it 'Spiritual India', another termed it 'Cultural India', and the third termed it 'Unbelievable India'.

The cliched visuals, the saffron clad sadhus and rope tricks performed amidst crowds..." he laments, "did nothing to reflect the changes India was going through."
That's when a vision statement was drawn out to promote India as a "premier holiday destination for high-yielding tourists".Grey Worldwide and Wieden+Kennedy were roped in as key advertising agencies for the campaign.

Perhaps one of the best chapters in the book is the one where Kant draws from his experience in Kerala and describes the wrong flight of the state's tourism in the 90s, which was punctuated by high volume, low value tourism -- "A solitary ITDC hotel, mass tourist arrivals in the form of garbage collectors from Manchester and cobblers from London contributing not more £15 a night."

The tourism ministry then decided to do away with mass tourism and soon products exclusive to Kerala were promoted to the affluent traveller -- the backwaters, ayurveda, kettuvallams (houseboats), the tree house, butterfly holidays, and traditional cuisines became the rallying points.

"How can India's first communist state be called 'God's Own Country'? There was no end to criticism," he writes. The turning point came when after a series of familiarisation tours with tour operators and travel writers, the National Geographic Traveller featured Kerala among 'fifty destinations of a lifetime'.

In subsequent chapters, Kant describes other tourism makeovers -- Ajanta Ellora, Kumbalgarh, Mahabalipuram and Hardwar -- and also throws light on parallel growth stories such as low carrier airlines, enhanced air connectivity, online travel portals and growing macro-economic confidence about India.

Kant admits that branding a destination is a multi-sectoral challenge. "I was dealing with home ministry for visas, state governments for taxi drivers, there were challenges in customs and immigration, tour operators, ASI sites -- all of them have to become your brand ambassadors," the author states. This was the backdrop when a parallel campaign -- 'Atithi Devo Bhava' -- was conceived.

Indeed, the book effectively conveys the importance and greatness of the Incredible India campaign, but it also gives a feeling that the campaign was too dependent on the success of 'God's Own Country'.One may also feel that the book -- designed stylishly by Wieden+Kennedy's V Sunil -- underplays the role of advertising's contribution to the 'Incredible India' campaign.

Lines such as 'An island a day, keeps the doctor away. Vitamin Sea'for Andaman islands; 'Not all Indians are polite, hospitable and vegetarian,' to talk about the Royal Bengal tiger, and 'One day, man will travel at the speed of thought. Pity,' to describe a calm meditative journey through Kerala's backwaters, are indicative of not just the tourism ministry's welcome savviness as a client, but also of a bureaucracy agreeing to promote Brand India in a slick manner.

True, Incredible India is a rare instance of savvy public sector advertising, which dared to poke fun at the country's glorious self.