Smiles of India captures positive stories across India: Sushil Goswami
The Himalaya Sparking White Toothpaste recently concluded its campaign, ‘Celebrating Life’, a unique photographic journey that was launched last year with street photographer and travel enthusiast Siddhartha Joshi. The campaign aimed to capture the stories of hope and joy spread across India and is part of a ‘spread a smile’ drive called Smiles of India. Himalaya conceptualised the Smiles of India initiative to spread happiness and positivity by capturing extraordinary stories of hope and resilience on a single platform. (https://smilesofindia.com/)
As part of the ‘Celebrating life’ initiative, Siddhartha Joshi travelled to 10 cities – viz. Pune, Bhubaneshwar, Jaipur, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Varanasi, Ranchi and Guwahati. Within each city, he met with people who defined the culture and tradition of that city and were working to keep it alive for the future generations. Their fascinating stories, coupled with their passion to embrace life each day with renewed vigour and enthusiasm, formed the crux of the campaign.
Explaining the id
AdGully got in touch with Sushil Goswami to know more about the campaign and here’s what he shared with us...
What were the objectives with which you had embarked on the Smiles of India initiative?
The digital campaign ‘Smiles of India’, a Himalaya Sparking White Toothpaste initiative, was conceptualised with a thought to bring alive the stories of hope and positivity that existed in different parts of the country. The campaign is an honest effort to provide people with a reason to smile and hope for a brighter future amidst the stress and anxiety that we are exposed to everyday.
We have tapped on to various themes to capture smile stories from time to time, which in turn are populated on our microsite – Smiles of India. Late last year, we executed a campaign called ‘Celebrating Life’, which was essentially ‘spread a smile’ drive. Here, the idea was to capture and relay smile stories across the country to give our readers a reason to smile.
As a brand, it is our mission to spread smiles and make people happy, through both our product offerings and campaign initiatives such as Smiles of India.
How did you decide to team up with Siddhartha Joshi for this campaign?
Siddhartha Joshi is an avid traveler, a blogger and a street photographer. His profile fit into the theme of our campaign since it aimed to come across people who not only defined their culture, but kept the tradition of their city alive for the future generations as well.
Their fascinating stories, coupled with their passion to embrace life every day along with renewed vigour and enthusiasm, formed the crux of the campaign.
For this campaign, we needed someone who would not only understood the concept, but would also be able to connect with the people on-ground.
Are there plans to take this campaign to more cities, apart from the 10 already covered, in the future?
While Smiles of India is our ongoing campaign, we just concluded Celebrating Life that was executed in 10 cities.
However, other initiatives such as ‘Showers of Smile’ during this rainy season, continues to run through Smiles of India, wherein the microsite is populated through new, quirky content every day.
How did Himalaya build a brand connect through this campaign?
The campaign is aligned with our brand mantra to spread happiness through wellness. Since the USP of our Sparkling White Toothpaste is ‘no-chemical bleach’ product, the intent of the initiative was to spread natural smile and optimism by giving people a million reasons to smile every day.
What other activations have you planned to extend the Smiles of India campaign?
We currently have the themed campaign ‘Showers of Smile’ running on the microsite owing to the ongoing monsoons. We are committed to drive activations year on year in our endeavour to assemble more and more smile stories from the country. Currently, our next activation is in a nascent stage and we will not be able to share the details.
What was the media mix used?
For ‘Celebrating Life’, we leveraged upon the print media landscape across the country and we have the microsite populated digitally with stories. Simultaneously, these stories are populated consistently on our social media platforms – Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
Was the idea conceptualised in-house or was any agency involved in the process?
The activation idea ‘Celebrating Life’ was conceptualised in-house, while the implementation partner was Genesis Burson-Marsteller, our PR consultancy.