Ad agencies jump onto the Make In India bandwagon

The Make in India and Magnetic Maharashtra campaigns were conceptualised by Weiden & Kennedy and Rediffusion Y&R respectively

The India office of American ad major Weiden & Kennedy is not the only ad agency involved with the Make in India week currently on in the city.

Arun Nanda’s Rediffusion Y&R has been part of the Maharashtra leg, producing everything from the ad films, print ads and billboards under the Magnetic Maharashtra banner.

Dhunji Wadia, president, Rediffusion Y&R, said the challenge at hand was to project Maharashtra as an investment destination even as the brief involved welcoming the world to the city to be part of the week-long event.

To ensure there was no disconnect with the lion logo and main theme conceptualised by Weiden & Kennedy, Rediffusion took the industrial elements of the mascot to create a laman diya or lamp that is lit at special occasions.

V Sunil, former executive creative director at Weiden & Kennedy, who was the brain behind the Make in India concept and logo, says the project is massive enough to see the involvement of multiple agencies.

“There are a number of states who are part of this project and for their agency partners to be involved with this initiative is a natural extension,” he said.

Sunil, who continues to be part of the Make In India initiative as a consultant, says the second phase of the programme will be to take it to smaller towns and cities in a bid to get people from those areas involved in the project.

“Make in India is a national programme and not something that is restricted to the big cities.

"Getting people from the smaller towns and cities will be the next leg for us,” he says.

Since conceptualising the Make In India concept a year-and-a-half ago, Sunil and his team at Weiden & Kennedy were involved in promoting it across the world, taking it to destinations such as the Hannover Messe, the world’s largest trade fair and Davos 2015.

The team was also involved in keeping the buzz alive, especially on social media and digital platforms.

“I won’t take complete credit for this project because the government, notably, the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion led by Amitabh Kant, was an able partner,” Sunil said.

“At some stage we realised that besides promoting it abroad, we also needed to have something within the country to get people, especially, young people excited about manufacturing.

"Mumbai is the financial capital of the country and a global destination for an event of this size,” he added.

Image: Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the inauguration of the ‘Make In India’ in New Delhi. Photograph: Kind courtesy, PIB