Indian Railways - wonderful !!!

CWG and all the mess that it created, the negative energy and the media debates, the last minute efforts, dogs and snakes, fallen bridges and fallen hopes……

Everything  turned into a bright ray of hope as the day came to an end on 3 rd Oct 2010.  As the world watched in awe, as India unfolded its unparalleled history, geography and myths before the world in all grandeur and blush, in its infinite variety, any one who would have seen the show, at least for a second would have wanted to be an Indian….

I sat glued to TV and after ages  Doordarshan (India’s national channel who had the exclusive right over the CWG show)  amused me and after some hours I was trying to calculate the number of years of mine , where I would have had nothing to do with the first TV channel of ours…

The show was awesome as you have seen and read it all, but Doordarshan had to live up to its nick name Kroordarshan.. … Commercial breaks with no logic and sense.., an array of ads that were nothing but irritating (largely of the Public sector and hence irresponsible), and poor visual and miserable sound quality…. And to top it, you never knew when the break appears, suddenly cutting short an event in the thickly packed stadia making India curse its national TV….

I was too lazy to pick up a remote and sat idle when I saw this …a group of men playing a train like we all used to do as kids, singing and going galli galli and house after house.. 10 seconds into the ad I knew it was something worth watching and when it ended I had goosebumps all over..

I am in love with this ad because ..

1. It is from the Indian railways, I would have never expected them to come out with such a stuff.. (My apologies for the earlier “public sector and hence irresponsible statement”.)
2. It was different in terms of concept, so very near to all of us- (all of us would have played a train) and yet so very different, it can grab attention and hold you in its grip and make you feel proud of the biggest railway network of the world..
3. It has a Potent strategy in it, it stands out and has a strong selling idea and more over ,it is relevant and can be build into a campaign without much efforts…

Kudos to Indian railways, Nirvana Films and Prakash Varma…. It is a sea change from what the PSU ads looked and stared at us like…


After note :- in case you have read the post already , this info came to me late as my contact with Prakash Varma just buzzed me saying, the ad had a Piyush touch in it.. Not entirely the idea but parts of it and the song to its entirety... so Kudos to the great Piyush Pandey as well...