What went behind River’s ‘The One for Everything’ campaign

afaqs! spoke to Rhiju Talukdar, co-founder and director, Dot Films, about the brainstorming, execution, brief of the campaign.

River, a Bengaluru-based EV maker company, launched its electric scooter, 'Indie’ in February 2022. They were launching after two years in stealth mode and were looking for a campaign that could showcase the special real-life utility of the bike (Indie) and also its aesthetic vibe. 

It was positioned to be the new-age ‘hustler’s’ bike, that has unique features. To make the campaign, the brand assigned the task to DOT Films. In the campaign titled as ‘The One for Everything’, the agency has managed to display the narrative use case of the bike with its features like generous boot space, and ancillary storage which is set against a beautiful backdrop of Goa.

The campaign was awarded in Marketers’ Excellence Awards (MEA 2023) with a gold medal (scored 9 points) in the category of best long-form video. 

Rhiju Talukdar, co-founder & director at Dot Films shares the brainstorming process which led to this idea, “Before the brainstorming we had an initial thought of using Goa as the base of the story since it was optimum from both the lenses. From the POV of creating fresh stories and logistics reasons as well. Then the brainstorming began by identifying Goa-specific subculture where we could easily find the hustling archetype that the bike resonated with. We picked the food truck scene since it is an emerging but invisible movement that gave us a good non cliche point to jump off."

“The next part of the creative canvassing was the actual story, for which we took inspiration from the startup culture which has a backstory of trial, failure, and reward and we tried to showcase it with a lighthearted lens,” he adds.

With this, the agency was looking to pay homage to Goa and avoid the tourist side of things in the city. They used an Old Goan Ballad as inspiration to create the melody.

Talukdar mentioned that the brand was happy with the output from the client side. “There wasn’t any feedback, it was just at the further stages in creative development which needed some tweaking of specifics in the story which we agreed upon, and with it, the film came much better.”

From the briefing to execution, the campaign was made in about five to six weeks.