Incredible India’s global campaign assigned to Ashok Creatives

The Ministry of Tourism has zeroed in on an agency to handle the creative and media duties for Incredible India’s international campaign. Both the domestic and international parts of the business were under review. While the agency for the domestic part is yet to be decided, the creative and media duties for the international campaign have been awarded to Ashok Creatives (the in-house creative wing of the India Tourism Development Corporation, or ITDC).

Ashok Creatives will be in charge of the global creatives as well as the media releases in four key international markets – the US, Canada, Asia Pacific (including the Middle East and Australia) and Europe. Grey Worldwide had done the job for last year’s campaign.

The media mix will include television, press and outdoor. The Incredible India campaign always uses outdoor extensively, apart from print. And this is why Media Mindscapes has been retained as the outdoor vendor. Media Mindscapes will do the media buying for the outdoor media, and the planning for the same will be done by the organisation itself.

The ministry has decided to use various popular sites such as the Times Square in New York on New Year’s Eve (where a huge crowd tends to gather) or outdoor sites that have been booked near prominent international airports such as London, Paris, Dubai and Singapore.

Besides outdoor and print, this year Ministry of Tourism has also included television in its media plan, which is also expected play a crucial role.

As far as television goes, Incredible India ads will run on major international channels in various markets. Some of these channels include BBC, CNN, Discovery (including D Max in Germany), National Geographic Channel, Sky News, Fox, Travel Channel (in Germany and France) and Euro News (in Europe).

The press plan is that there will be more emphasis on magazines than on newspapers. Within the magazine genre, lifestyle, travel, business and consumer magazines will be targeted.

According to officials at the Ministry of Tourism, ad spends for the international campaign are pegged at Rs 75-80 crore. A decision on the agency for the domestic campaign is expected soon; ad spends for the same are around Rs 45 crore. As reported by agencyfaqs! earlier, as many as 18 agencies were in the fray for the business initially, and six of those were shortlisted for the final round. These include Grey Worldwide, O&M, FS Advertising, RK Swamy/BBDO, Ashok Creative and a Lintas Group agency.

© 2006 agencyfaqs!