Ogilvy presents Rajasthan through the eyes of travellers

The Rajasthan Government rolled out a multi-year, multi-modal and multi-narrative domestic and international campaign on January 15, 2016. Over the next few years, the Government is expected to spend over Rs 100 crore on this campaign that envisages rebranding Rajasthan Tourism, including a new logo. The state has partnered with Ogilvy & Mather for the creative side of the campaign. The agency has earlier worked on tourism campaigns for Gujarat, MTDC, and Madhya Pradesh, among others.

Meanwhile, the logo reveal film, which showcases sand art animation, has been done by Eeksaurus Studios. The campaign includes six films, print, outdoor, radio and an extensive digital campaign.

The state government has also appointed a Steering Committee to monitor the creation and implementation of this campaign that includes Mira Mehrishi, Member Secretary Chief Minister’s Advisory Council; Shailendra Agarwal, Principal Secretary Tourism; Malvika Singh, member, Chief Minister’s Advisory Council and writer; Shoba Narayan, author and journalist; and Anil Chaplot, Director - Tourism.

The campaign is part of an overall plan for Rajasthan Tourism 3.0. Rajasthan Tourism 1.0 was from Independence till the early 80s, whose engine was the state’s landscape. Rajasthan 2.0 began with heritage hotels and forts. Now, Rajasthan Tourism 3.0 will combine assets from both phases with an aggressive marketing campaign, a new logo and packed experience calendar that is being developed.

Despite wide and deep attractions, the state’s lack of tourism marketing over the last 25 years has resulted in the state falling considerably in international tourism (its share has fallen from 33 per cent to 20 per cent of international travelers) and domestic tourism arrivals (the state gets half of Madhya Pradesh’s 63 million internal tourists) because of aggressive efforts from other states. Tourism is not only employment intensive, but capital efficient: it generates 78 jobs per million rupees of investment compared to 45 jobs per million rupees in the manufacturing sector.

The state government recently unveiled a tourism unit policy to attract investments and the Resurgent Rajasthan Investment Summit later this year will see the unveiling of a new tourism policy along with the new tourism campaign.

Team Ogilvy, guided by Piyush Pandey, Executive Chairman & Creative Director, Ogilvy & Mather South Asia, who hails from Rajasthan, has conceptualised the campaign. Rajasthan is a destination of discoveries and surprises. Like the largest man-made lake, a hill station, balloon rides, scenic islands, waterfalls – anything and everything that one would have never expected Rajasthan to offer as a tourist destination. Hence, the tagline, ‘Jaane Kya Dikh Jaaye!’

Pandey commented, “Rajasthan Tourism is the campaign I have been waiting for, for the last decade. It is my home state and I think I owe it an impactful and effective campaign.  I am looking forward to the exciting times ahead.”

The five films aim to change the perception of Rajasthan that is limited to the Hawa Mahal or old palaces, forts and the desert. Rajasthan looks different through the eyes of different travellers. Through the eyes of Arya, it becomes Aryasthan. Through the eyes of Meera, it becomes Meerasthan. Through the eyes of Binoy, it becomes Binoysthan.

Capturing the timeless essence of Rajasthan through sand animation

The sixth film is to launch the new logo of Rajasthan Tourism. The unique, proprietary style and technique devised for the logo animation uses sand and clay relief forms that have been derived from 2D animation. Once the entire 50-second animation on paper was ready, each frame was translated digitally to laser cut stencils. These stencils were then worked over by clay to provide the three dimensional depth that is seen in the film and then animated over frame by frame with sand.

Crafted in sand, the story line has been conceptualised to capture the state’s most recognisable features – be it the culture, places of historical importance or the flock of camels that walk the seemingly never ending desert.

Commenting on the campaign, Suresh Eriyat, Founder and Creative Director, Eeksaurus, said, “This project has been very exciting to work on as it gave us the freedom to explore our creative potential to the fullest. The state of Rajasthan creates an immediate recall for what it is built on, that is, sand and, therefore, we decided to capitalise on this factor. Sand animation calls for a great amount of attention to detail and, therefore, every movement and change in surroundings has been looked upon very delicately. In keeping the design thought process central to the visuals, we were able to effectively cater to the captivating storyline that comes across in the film, thereby holding true on making each of our films distinct from the other.”

Shailendra Agarwal, Principal Secretary, Tourism, elucidated, “Rajasthan has not conducted a tourism campaign for the last 25 years and this effort could attract at least 1 million incremental tourists with a considerable multiplier effect on growth and employment for our state.”

Shoba Narayan, member of the Tourism Steering Committee, added here, “The campaign mandate to O&M was to come up with something fresh and digitally native. Tourism marketing has considerably changed with the Internet and social media and we look forward to presenting something from Rajasthan Tourism for this new world.”

Campaign credits:

Creative agency: Ogilvy India

Creative:

Piyush Pandey - Executive Chairman & Creative Director, South Asia

Mahesh Gharat – Group Creative Director

Azazul Haque – Group Creative Director

Makarand Joshi – Senior Creative Director

Abhay Manachekar – Assistant Creative Director

Hemal Sirsikar – Creative Controller

Sandip Gaikwad - Senior Art director

Adwait Kulkarni – Copy Supervisor

Prasad Gurav – Art Director

Akshay Gawde – Art Director

Account Management:

Vivek Verma – Senior Vice President

Pooja Jaggi – Group Account Manager

Shoaib Alim – Account Supervisor

Vaishali Upadhyay – Account Executive

Maria Suratwala – Assistant Account Executive

Production House: Nirvana Films

Director: Prakash Varma

Sand Animation film:

Team Studio Eeksaurus

Project Lead - Rajib Mandal

Associate Director - Bargav Sridhar

Editor - Tintu K Philip

Visual Design - Rajib Mandal & Ranjit Mandal

Layout Design - Ranjit Mandal & Rajib Mandal

Research - Rajib Mandal, Ranjit Mandal, Bargav Sridhar

Pre-production - Rajib Mandal, Ranjit Mandal, Bargav Sridhar, Dhimant Vyas, Sanjay Patkar, Sailesh Chindarkar , Ramesh Jadhav, Rishy Benjamin Jacob

2D Animation - Rajib Mandal

Clay modeling & sculpting - Sanjay Patkar, Sailesh Chindarkar, Ramesh Jadhav, Rishy Benjamin Jacob, Aditya Raje, Keyur Patel, Moshin Hakim

Clean Up - Sanjay Patkar, Sailesh Chindarkar , Ramesh Jadhav, Rishy Benjamin Jacob, Rajib Mandal

Sand Animation:

Lead animator: Dhimant Vyas (Tata Interactive Systems Ltd.)

Animator: Rajib Mandal (Studio Eeksaurus)

Tata Interactive Systems Team Lead: Manisha Mohan

Project management (TIS): Reena Shah

Visual Effects - Nilesh Dhore, Debajyoti Roychowdhury, Anik Roy, Vijay Rana

Compositing - Nilesh Dhore, Mohammed Azeem

Production Coordination - Divya Sangle, Bargav Sridhar

Post production coordinator - Jivan Gaikwad

Production support - Uttam Jethihore, Sachin Mokal, Prashanth Kamble, Sushma Malkar

Rajasthan Tourism new ad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIGiogZEiKA&list=PLMADVEzDx2z8LzHfxR8fz0iFkYHgyga44