The feeling of actually strategising and executing a complete ad campaign was extremely motivating.
One of the assignments we received at SCMC for the subject of Indian History – Post Independence, was to prepare an advertising campaign in case of a hypothetically imposed national emergency. It remains my most favourite assignment till date.
It was probably the most challenging and interesting assignment I ever worked on with a team, because first, we had to understand the meaning of ‘national emergency’ and learn about its previous impositions in the country. Then we had to analyse the possible restrictions, while formulating a complete media strategy to execute our chosen campaign.
Initially, I found it very tedious and time-consuming to work in a team. However, as we began working on it, not only did we start working efficiently, but also started putting in extra efforts as we gained more interest.
The assignment entailed a lot of learning since we made use of our history notes, as well as applied our research, creative and design tool skills. Preparing a strategy played a major part, for which we exercised our knowledge in media planning, marketing fundamentals and advertising strategy as well.
In order to complete the assignment, we came up with a campaign for ‘Hike Messenger’ while “censorship” of ten messages was imposed per day. Ours was a 360-degree advertising campaign on the theme ‘We Know What You’re Missing’, that involved the use of TV, print, outdoor, innovative media and digital media. The objective of the campaign was to empathize with the customers as censorship restricted their conversations with their loved ones. Additionally, it was also meant to inform them about the good news of the abolition of the censorship on a future date coupled with an upcoming free offer for all.
The innovation in our campaign was by insertion of postcards in print magazines, which allowed users to write as much as they wanted on the postcard and send it to their loved ones. We also wrote a newspaper advertorial covering the innovative activity. For TV, we created a storyboard for the advertisement, hoardings for outdoor media and sample posts for digital media like Facebook and Twitter.
Overall, it was a very fruitful experience as it made constructive use of all our knowledge as second year students. The historical context of the assignment made it unique and exciting. We almost stayed up all day and night to work on it without getting frustrated. The feeling of actually strategising and executing a complete ad campaign was extremely motivating, and the fact that we were inching towards a comprehensive end result kept us going as a team.
We were thoroughly content with our final submission.
Article by: Aayushi Sukhija (Batch 2017)
Illustration by: Aditya Dev Sharma and Nairika Lodhi (Batch 2019)
