Thomas Cook India redefines European travel experience

Thomas Cook (India) Limited, India’s leading omnichannel travel services company has leveraged outdoor media in a disruptive initiative to create buzz in both - the outdoor and digital - social media space. This exciting and clutter-breaking format, built on mixed reality and anamorphic displays is intended to grab attention and encourage social sharing by young India - amplifying Thomas Cook’s brand visibility and cool quotient.

To emphasize its campaign theme – Europe, Best Experienced with Thomas Cook – the brand has conceptualised a 3D anamorphic creative that showcases a breath-taking shot of Switzerland’s Glacier Express on a journey across the iconic Brusio Spiral Bridge. The moving display of one of the most scenic train rides in Europe, features the Glacier Express literally popping out of the hoarding, making it an exciting experience for the motorists/pedestrians passing the hoarding.

In addition, Thomas Cook India has also smartly utilized mixed reality to create an illusion of an outdoor hoarding installed at an iconic location in Mumbai. This short video of the outdoor site, showcases a train zipping through the Swiss Alps, while creating an illusion of snow cascading from the hoarding onto the streets, surprising/shocking onlookers. 

The campaign was conceptualised and executed by one of the leading outdoor agencies - Outdoor Advertising Professionals.

Mr. Abraham Alapatt, President & Group Head, Marketing, Service Quality, Value Added Services & Innovation, Thomas Cook (India) Limited said, “I am delighted to bring an innovative concept to our new-age Indian consumers, intended to create excitement/buzz around travel. We have smartly leveraged mixed reality and 3D anamorphic displays to bring to life the iconic Glacier Express speeding through Switzerland’s spiral Brusio viaduct – while showering snow from the hoarding onto unsuspecting bystanders!

The shock and awe encourages social sharing among today’s digital natives, hungry for vibrant new formats/content.

Our intent is to increase brand visibility via exciting/innovative concepts and to up our cool quotient/appeal to target young India.”

Mr. Abhijit Sengupta, CEO, OAP Mediatech said, “With optical Illusion on billboards having been a monopoly of an overseas agency, I was waiting for an opportunity to experiment on anamorphic executions as well as the mixed reality content in India. And then came Thomas Cook’s brief!

While creating anamorphic designs with physical items like a can or car is relatively easy, but to come up with an idea on a holiday destination and that too entire Europe, was a challenging proposition. And we did not have any stock pictures or video shoots to work upon. That’s when we thought of making rail the hero, the ambassador. Everything was done from scratch - CAD modelling, to texturing, light & shadowing and finally rendering and compositing.

In both the cases we chose a 1-plane anamorphic drawing, since the digital billboard chosen was a flat one. For the round bridge, a 3-plane perspective grid and for the tunnel a 2-point but reverse perspective grid was chosen.
I would like to thank Thomas Cook for the opportunity and the faith in us.”