Ad blitz spawned many spin-offs

‘‘I chose ‘India Shining’ because there’s a glow on everyone’s face and a sense of pride and well-being,’’ said Prathap Suthan, national creative head of Grey Worldwide who came up with the catchphrase in five days.

Recently, as many as five campaigns have borrowed from Grey Worldwide’s creativity. Brands such as State Bank of India have blatantly used the line ‘‘India is shining! So is State Bank group!!’’ In fact, Sanjay Suri, creative head of Concept, unabashedly admits that there’s nothing new in the SBI campaign. ‘‘It’s not unique, but there’s no question of copying another ad either,’’ said Suri, adding, ‘‘We’ve just picked on ‘India Shining’ because it’s topical, and works.’’

Mumbai’s da Cunha Communications, known for the droll Amul hoardings, took off on the campaign with an ‘‘India Dining’’ tagline, though Rahul da Cunha, the agency’s director, is unimpressed with the original. ‘‘It doesn’t tell me anything,’’ he said, ‘‘the TVC’s boring too and we’ve seen all the montage shots of happy people before. We’re going through bad times and we need a message that goes deep into our hearts. But these images just don’t move you.’’

Bad times? Suthan thinks not. ‘‘The campaign followed the Ministry’s brief, which declared that ‘all macro-economic indicators are in place’ and hoped to build more confidence and gain investors.’’ Released last October, the campaign was pulled off after four days due to the Assembly elections and re-released in the first week of December. ‘‘The phrase has become a part of the lexicon, so much so that even front-page stories in newspapers in the past month have used it, whether it’s to describe the Indian cricket team or the economy,’’ said Nirvik Singh, chairman South Asia, Grey Global Group.

Which is why the Maharashtra Government was not far behind with the ‘‘Maharashtra Leads’’ campaign, also modelled on the common man and his needs. But Mohammed Khan, chairman of ad agency Enterprise Nexus, feels that ‘‘Maharashtra Leads’’ is not off the beaten track. ‘‘Though I thought the ‘India Shining’ campaign didn’t look like the normal government campaigns and touched a chord,’’ he added.

Even Public Service Units have seized the punchline. A tender issued by the Shipping Corporation of India reads: ‘‘And now India’s shine finds its reflection on water!’’

There were also subtler spin-offs such as ‘‘Let’s put India first’’ for ITC, devised by J Walter Thompson, and ONGC’s ‘‘Making tomorrow brighter’’, designed by Grey Worldwide.

Even competitors agree that the strategy comes shining through. ‘‘It’s a fantastic campaign for BJP and it doesn’t matter what image or text they’ve used, the ad’s picked up,’’ opined R Balakrishnan, national creative head, Lowe.

‘‘I haven’t seen much of it in the Hindi or Marathi papers,’’ says adman Kiran Khalap of Chlorophyll, who also drew up a campaign for the Congress in ’93, when he was a part of Clarion Bates. Khalap feels that the succint phrase sums up the political party’s agenda with less propaganda and more focus on consumer needs. Adman Prasoon Joshi of McCann Erickson agrees that the feel-good factor has spread in the metros. ‘‘There’s no harm in sharing the government’s progress with the people this way,’’ he says.

Meanwhile, a new ‘‘I make India shine’’ press ad was released last week, followed by a television campaign. ‘‘This deals with how an individual makes a difference to his country,’’ explains Suthan, who confirms that more campaigns will be beamed post-Lok Sabha elections.