Agnello Dias presents three case studies for the award-winning Times of India campaign
Agnello Dias, former JWT India creative who last yearfounded his own agency called Taproot, used his talk at Circus lastweek to take the audience through the ongoing Times of India campaign. Following arethe links to the case studies he presented.
1. Year One was 2007, the start of a remarkable journey of a brand that began with one single print ad (India vs. India) commemorating the 60th year of India’s independence. That single ad went on to become one of the largest parallel political movements in the world’s largest democracy. The ad was created during the Christmas week of 2006. It gained momentum through unprecedented public feedback to the video narrative of that ad by movie legend, Amitabh Bachchan on Youtube.
2. Year Two was the turn of an entirely new initiative. One that put the onus squarely on theindividual to give back something to the have nots in society. “And Indiansociety has a very clear demarcation of the two,” said Dias. “So the idea of sharingeducation and knowledge with those who are keen to receive it but do not havethe means to saw us bringing together about 200 NGOs and common people fromevery walk of life on to a common platform that was conceived, nurtured andfostered by one of the world’s largest media groups.
3. And lastly Dias spoke about the current ongoing campaign which is the most courageous and perhaps controversial campaign of all where they went out on a limb to start acitizen movement for peaceful thinking toward India’s neighbour Pakistan on thefirst anniversary of the Mumbai Terror Attacks. “It was a bold provocative move,” said Dias. “And the idea was to start a discussion or even a debate for peace rather thanthe jingoism of irrational hatred and populist call for war at that time. Itwas and still remains to my mind the bravest of all the TOI campaigns.”