India Shone For A While…?
Harish Bijoor

India shone in the minds of a few brilliant minds.
And these brilliant minds, sitting in a Gurgaon near Delhi or a Pali Hill postal address in Mumbai, were the knights in shining armour that actually created for a campaign that gobbled up a 400-crore plus campaign that we today infamously know as the “Bharat Uday”(in the vernacular) and the “India Shining” campaign of pre-election yore!

The just-buried “India Shining” campaign has possibly done the worst harm to Indian marketing and their advertising men. A campaign that has created a dichotomy between the real and the unreal. Between the truth and the untruth! A dichotomy that has India divided into two as usual. The ranks of those live in the realm of hype and those who live in the reality of living as a painful process itself.
This is a campaign that has many a marketing man, woman and child embarrassed. Something not to be spoken about. Something that exposes the soft underbelly of hype that surrounds every marketing campaign be it for soap or panty hose!
Yes, the “IS”(India Shining) campaign added possibly a 90 per cent share of the hype to the real, but be not surprised if this alerts the advertising man at large and the marketing man in his cubicle, working up lather on the next brand of juice or junk food to re-consider his hype- mix!
If at all the IS campaign has done some good, it will be seen in the advertising and marketing initiatives this nation will face in the decade ahead. Hopefully, all of us have learnt from the debacle that is “India Shining”!
The campaign at hand to disseminate, with the benefit of hindsight as aid , is one that just did not have the recipe for success right form start. Let’s examine what went wrong. A peek at the process at fault!

External Communication:
This was a good piece of external communication and a terrible piece to use as internal communication:
The “IS” story was a good one for the markets of the US. Even markets of the UK, parts of continental Europe, maybe a Singapore and several parts of South East Asia.

India Shining is essentially a showcase statement. A statement that could actually work wonders in markets that are external to the terrain of the country. A wonderful way to tell the guys out there in the great big world out there that India was happening! And how!

Here again, the story needed to be tweaked with care. Imagine going gung-ho in the markets of Manhattan with a campaign that speaks of bright and shining Indian faces! Happy faces! Prosperous faces!
With the huge off-shoring and outsourcing debate in US markets at a point of high decibel crescendo, it would indeed need a lot of tweaking. The guy out there on the streets of a New York is already wearing T-shirts that scream, “I have been Bangaloreed!” One doesn’t want this movement to catalyse further into one that develops into an India-hate campaign of any hue!

Nevertheless, the India Shining campaign was a good one to use on an India road show that wanted investors in. A campaign to seek Foreign Direct Investment into categories of every variety. A campaign that would aim to soften the India-view at many a foreign forums!
This again, even for markets overseas, is not a mass media campaign! This is a campaign that is best used through formats that are more “one-on-one”, or at worst “one-to-many”, but certainly not on a “one-to-all” kind of format that mass media television normally provides! When used in a mass manner, it loses the sensitivity it is meant to pack across audiences. A strong view this! Consider it!
Simple Basic Truth: External communication must not be used in the internal market!

Hegemony of the Urban Marketer:
We made the same mistake we normally do in literally every campaign we make in this country.
Indian marketing is led by marketers and advertising folk who are completely urban in their mindset. The background is completely urban. The mind, mood and ethos are as city-bred as it can get!
The urban marketer controls the reins of marketing and advertising in India. The man in the air-conditioned marketing cubicle will be a person who has done his schooling in a city, his pre-degree days in the very same city, watching the same English movies and appreciating the same beats of a Boney M or at best an A R Rahman! He did his degree in a big city as well. And guess what! If he has an MBA tag to him, it may as well be a tag from the bigger city of them all….from overseas! Never mind if it is an Australian University even!

This is my big grouse against Indian marketing at large. It is marketing led by urban folk. It is indeed apartheid of sorts at play! Remember, India is all of three-fourths rural. Only a quarter and less of India lives in the cities. Yet, Indian marketing is dominated 95 per cent of the time by men and women who just don’t understand India.

I divide India into two. One is real India. The other virtual. Real India is rural. Virtual India is the one in which you and I live, study, eat, entertain ourselves, buy and procreate in. Real India is one in which the real mass of India lives. Indian advertising and marketing has always failed to appreciate the intricacies of real India! We are good at virtual stuff! Because, we are virtual!

And this was as virtual as it could get. India is shining in Gurgaon, which incidentally is no sleepy village anymore.

India is shining in a Bangalore with all the BPO jobs bringing prosperity in the hands of those who could not imagine it even! But what about a Pedapalli and a Jhumri Talaya?
As three fourths of India reeled under a spell of a lack of even the basic facilities that cause for the hygiene factors of decent living, here was this Govt. Of India campaign that made the rest of the masses salivate about things they didn’t have!
Imagine the plight of the guy walking into a mall in Hyderabad and staring blindly at a waterfall in a mall! A lush fountain in an office complex at Gacchibowli! The guy doesn’t have water to drink in Mahabubnagar! Where is India shining?
The guy aggravated things further. He went back home and spoke of how development was a metro phenomenon! The Opposition party of every hue captured this very core-truth and feeling and ran with a campaign that did not have glitz and glamour. Just simple words. Simple and stark visuals. Simple and basic issues. Food, clothing and shelter.
The India Shining campaign made the average Indian on the street realize all the things he didn’t have!
Simple Basic Truth: A brand must never remind the consumer of what he should have but doesn’t!

Thought in English:
The IS campaign was all about sentiment that is urban and English. All about a thought process that has English oozing out in the tone and tenor of the films at hand. The campaign was as slick as they come. The imagery is advertising-centric. The real imagery in the Indian hinterland is more of a documentary-centric picturisation.
India Shining came through as a slick ad for a soap and sanitary napkin. India is more!
Simple Basic Truth: Don’t glamorise a subject beyond what it can take!

Too Big a Campaign:
High decibel advertising has its own limitation. When somebody tells you something once, you listen. And when told twice over, you listen even more intently!
When someone tells it to you day in and day out, every time you switch on the ‘telly’, you switch off. You even wonder whether it is true. You wonder why it needs to be said so often!
Simple Basic Truth: The one who shouts loudest is not necessarily the one who is heard! Also, the one who shouts again and again will not be trusted!