INCREDIBLE INDIA
Does India have a brand?
CHALLENGE
Naresh Gupta: Hi, I’m Naresh Gupta. I work as Strategic
Planner for South Asia region for Grey, and I’ve been the
chief planner on the business of Incredible India and part of
“ We never wanted to lose the fact that
the campaign that created Magic for India.
Sudhir Nair: Hi I’m Sudhir Nair I head G2 Interactive in South
Asia. I’ve been a part of the Incredible India campaign from
the day of its launch in 2002 til 2008.
NG: The challenge really was to craft an India experience.
India is a land of diversity, clearly it was a place where the
backpackers came and never the rich came. So there was
interest from the rich, they possibly knew a few things about
us; they knew us as the place of elephants, they knew us as
the place of Taj. They knew a bit of India from the Himalays,
but really we were not getting the premium tourists.
SN: India as a destination never had a brand name at all.
Singapore had Uniquely Singapore, Malaysia had Truly
Asia. India never had a brand name at all. The brief that
was given to all agencies was to project India as a place
for physical and mental rejuvenation, cultural enrichment,
spiritual evaluation, and also India as a place with a modern
state-of-the-art infrastructure.
IDEA
SN: When we started off, if you look at the way India is,
there is almost twenty-seven to thirty different languages.
We have got different kinds of cultures. If you go to North
India, people look different, if you go to South, people look
different. Destinations are quite different. Which is why we
have said that India is an incredible mix of diversity, culture,
beautiful people and destinations. And that is where the
whole campaign began.
NG Actually we leveraged almost everything India could
give as a property. From high mountains to desert to rivers
to beach side to anything the country possessed and we
wanted to capture each one of them. Old civilization, old
ruins which existed to the Taj Mahal, which India was known
for because it was seven wonders of the world. We wanted
to package almost everything into it, but with a soul. We
never wanted to lose the fact that India is an experience of
the soul.
SN: And that was at a time when alternative medicine, Yoga and
Ayurveda were gaining importance across the globe. That is
something that we tried to promote consciously across all the
campaigns that we’ve done.
India is an experience of the soul.”
SOLUTION
SN: We worked on this very interesting insight, which said
if you look at the Western world, grey is the predominant
color, thanks to the weather, the way the architecture is.
It’s not really colorful. What people say a lot about India is
that India is colorful. We needed something that’s unique
to India, and we needed something that creates a unique
experience for India. Colors came across as the theme that
binds the entire thing. It was always brighter, it was always
vibrant, it was always the magenta and reds and dark blues,
that defined this part of the world, and went off in Time
Square, or when they went up in London and Paris, because
of those colors they just came alive, and for very little media
money that we were spending this was talked about, this
was spoken of. An I think it helped us even in the online
space where these kind of colors are normally not used on
banners or emotions. So they even struck from the screens
of your computer.
NG: If you look at the budget spent Incredible India has, it’s
almost one-tenth of what the other countries would spend.
We started by promoting India as a destination, and then
again, we came back to doing theme-based campaign,
holiday things for things like spirituality was a theme.
Buddhism was a theme, alternative medicine was a theme,
Yoga was a theme,
SN: And that is when the whole street and folk art of India
came to life, and we did this campaign, we said to cure
twenty-first century stress, stand for two thousand five
hundred years. That was the whole idea of saying okay let’s
marry something which is unique to India and take it into the
kind of context which is Indian and then start to throw it all
across globe.
RESULTS
SN: There are two big numbers this campaign pulled. It
increased the India share in tourism market from three
percent to four percent, and it increased the spending to
the second highest level in the world, after U.S. So while
 average spending is about thirteen hundred dollars, in India
it spends about twelve hundred dollars.

NG: The website has always seen sharp increase in terms

of traffic. So there has always been an increase of close to
two hundred percent, which is phenomenal. What started
out in 2002 with four hundred destinations was eventually
scaled to almost a thousand six hundred destinations.

“ What started out in 2002 with four

hundred destinations was eventually
scaled to almost a thousand six
hundred destinations.”
SN: This campaign went on to win twice in a year. It won
the gold for destination campaign of the year at PARTA
which is the travel agent association across the globe.
Two years ago Singapore did a new RFP for Singapore
tourism. One of the thing they said in the RFP was
replicate the Incredible India Story. Because India has
been really successful in pushing the tourism product.
ASIA PACIFIC
NG: The most fulfilling aspect of this entire campaign is Mike Amour, Chairman & CEO
that we were involved right from the conceptualization No. 1 Magazine Road
stage. We’ve seen the brand progress from nothing to #03-07 Central Mall
Singapore 059567
where it is today. We have part of the campaign which
Tel +65 6511 7600
won a Euro Effie-all these are quite fulfilling experience. mike.amour@grey.com
SN: And professionally is was a great joy to actually
EMEA
sell a country and not sell a small product, because at Carolyn Carter, President & CEO, EMEA
the end of the day the transaction of a product is real, The Johnson Building
the transaction in the case of a country is very unreal. 77 Hatton Garden
And if you could sell a product like that and make it London EC1 N8J
United Kingdom
come alive was even more exciting and exhilarating.
Tel +44 20 3037 3000
carolyn.carter@greyeu.com

NORTH AMERICA
Jim Heekin, Chairman & CEO
777 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10017
USA
Tel +1 212 546 2000
jheekin@grey.com

LATIN AMERICA
Scott Hollingsworth, Senior Vice President
902 Clint Moore Road, Suite 226
Boca Raton, FL 33487
USA
Tel +1 212 303 2350
shollingsworth@grey.com

Worldwide Headquarters
777 Third Avenue New York, NY 10017 USA Tel +1 212 546 2000

Jim Heekin
Chairman & CEO
+1 212 546 2000
jkeekin@grey.com

Owen Dougherty
Chief Communications Officer
+1 212 546 2551
odougherty@grey.com