TOI’s Lead India campaign to launch TVC for final phase

The campaign has been created by the JWT team, led by Agnello Dias, national creative director, JWT

The Times of India (TOI) will soon launch its first commercial for the third phase of the Lead India campaign.

The Lead India campaign was launched on January 1, 2007. The campaign has completed its first two phases and is in its final stage. It was created by the JWT team, led by Agnello Dias, national creative director, JWT.

The first phase of the campaign was a series of print ads titled India Poised, along with a commercial starring actor Amitabh Bachchan. This phase provoked the thought whether we are really capable of achieving what the world is expecting of us as a nation. The second phase of the campaign, which started in August, revealed the Lead India initiative and asked the audience what they would ‘do’ if they were the leaders of the country. A lot of emphasis was laid on pushing the audience to aggressively ‘do’ something for the country. A series of print ads titled Do were run in newspapers with actor Shah Rukh Khan being the lead face.

The other members of the JWT team that worked on the campaign include Vistasp Hodiwala, senior creative director (copy); Debu Purkayastha, associate vice-president (art); Arkadyuti Basu (copy); and Vinayak Gaekwad (art).

Vistasp Hodiwala explains that the task for their team in the third phase was different from the first two phases. While the first and the second phase created awareness and invited participants, the brief for the third phase was to garner as much support from the audience for the eight final contestants.

The insight for the commercial is that most people in the country are aware of the prevalent economic, political and social troubles, but nobody wants to do anything about it. People know the solution to the problems, but they prefer to complain rather than act.

The commercial shows a tree that has collapsed in the middle of the road in a crowded city. The fallen tree has created a huge traffic jam, people in cars are honking and cursing each other, there is no policeman in sight. A boy sits in a bus watching the chaos. He is perplexed, not able to understand why people are making such a ruckus about a simple problem. So, he gets down and starts walking towards the tree.

At that moment, it starts raining. On reaching the tree, the little boy starts pushing hard to remove it from the road. Suddenly, everyone calms down and focuses on the boy. The child’s initiative transforms into a revolution as all the people caught in the traffic jam join in to help him remove the tree. The line that appears at the end of the commercial says, ‘Seeking tomorrow’s leaders today. Lead India – the search is on.’

Milind Dhaimade, ad filmmaker, Equinox Films, directed the film. The background song that runs throughout was written by Gulzar and set to music by Shankar Ehsaan Loy.

According to Hodiwala, the tree in the commercial is a metaphor for the state of the nation today. The whole idea of the commercial is to combat the cynicism prevailing in the country and generate serious appeal. The commercial aims to inspire its audience to back the eight young contestants who are running for the position of ultimate leader and provide them support with their votes.

The commercial will run on air for a period of eight-10 weeks. There are two versions of the commercial. One is a full length music video of more than two minutes’ duration to be aired mostly on music channels. The other one is a shortened version of 80 seconds, which will run as a regular commercial.

TOI and JWT have also planned a print campaign along with the TVC for the third phase. The print campaign shows the eight contestants together with lines such as ‘I am the idea that India awaits’, ‘I am the inspiration that India expects’ and ‘I am the change that India desires’. The print version of the campaign follows the idea in the TVC and provokes the audience to vote for the contestants. More ads of the campaign will be released with more lines in the coming days. The agency will have outdoor hoardings and advertisements for the campaign and may also include radio in the future.

TOI has partnered with STAR One to launch the show of the same name, Lead India, on December 8. The show will have 10 episodes that will be aired every Saturday at 8 pm on STAR One with a simulcast on STAR Utsav. In the final stages of the show, the participants will propose a dream project, envisage a vision statement and convince the jury to grant Rs 50 lakh to have the project executed.

The first show of Lead India will be hosted by Amitabh Bachchan. Later shows will be anchored by actor Anupam Kher. The jury for the show will comprise Javed Akhtar, Kiran Bedi and TOI senior editor Vikas Singh.