Travelogue

CAMPAIGN LOGIC

Aditya Birla Group's latest ad offers travel and overseas exposure as a job incentive.

Postured against a backdrop of monuments like Capitol Hill and Mount Rushmore in the US, the protagonist in a television commercial says, "I wanted to spend my life travelling, but a man has to work."

The scene is frozen into a postal stamp that gets affixed on what seems like a transfer letter to China. The story moves from the Great Wall to the Australian National Park, Sydney where a boomerang is flung at him.

The protagonist is soon heading for his next port of call, where deers graze and peacocks prance. A rainbow crosses the screen. "Where the whole world wants to be...," says the protagonist talking about his latest posting, India. The camera zooms out to show a postal stamp of the Taj Mahal.

What could be easily mixed up as a promotion to promote philately (collecting stamps) is an attempt to attract talent by the Rs 96,000-crore Aditya Birla Group that has diverse business interests spanning cement to cellular phone services.

"They say travel broadens the mind. It also broadened my career," quips the protagonist as the 40-second commercial comes to a close amidst chants of Vande Mataram.

What prompted the group with more than 100,000 employees to launch this campaign? A study by human resource consultancy Hewitt declared the group as a best employer for 2007.

"The campaign was a way of celebrating our recognition as best employers. We are communicating the employee value proposition that we offer," says Santrupt Misra, director, group HR and IT, Aditya Birla Group.

"Brands really drive people. The employer brand, job title and overseas exposure are huge pull factors for prospective employees," says Anita Belani, country head, human capital group, Watson Wyatt Worldwide.

The campaign is launched at a time when the group is on an expansion spree. It recently entered the retail business and is expanding its presence in telecom. "Keeping growth plans in mind, we would require 7,000-10,000 people in different businesses over the next three years," adds Misra.

Atul Hegde, chief operating officer, Vyas Giannetti Creative (VGC), the ad agency behind the campaign, adds that it's not just about adding to the headcount, but also attracting the right talent.

The brief to the ad agency was to leverage the award as a tool to attract talent. The group also wanted to portray the advantages of working with a home-grown global enterprise, highlight its presence in high-growth sectors and so on.

"The objective was to communicate the achievement in a clutter-breaking format, while maintaining the surreal imagery of the brand," says Tarini Mohindar, client services director, VGC. "It is targeted at the entire employment market to convey the employee value proposition," adds Misra.

The agency felt that it was best to show each facet of the company through different ads. Hence VGC developed three TVCs "" the "stamps" commercial, which has been on air for the last three weeks, is the final ad in the series.

The first two ads that were telecast mostly in business news channels for about 3-4 weeks before the stamps commercial, focused on the group offering flexibility to work across sectors and how talented employees could get faster career progression.

The first advertising spot (sectors) was set in a futuristic space inspired by the legendary Dutch artist M C Escher, to show that anything is possible within the group, like moving from an aluminium company to insurance.

In the second spot, the ascent of the executive's cabin is used as a metaphor for accelerated growth, while the shape of the group's building at the end of the commercial resembles an organisational chart.

The look and feel of every ad in the three part series was kept different. Ryan Menezes, executive creative director, VGC says, "We had to make the spots as visually involving as possible to retain viewer interest."

The stamps commercial was the most difficult to execute. While the average time taken to shoot an ad is about 2-3 weeks, the ad took close to three months.

After trying, and rejecting, three animation houses in the US, Singapore and Australia, the agency finally zeroed in on a freelancer from New Zealand and meshed it with efforts from another Indian artist. Will prospective employees put their stamp of approval on that?