ART BY THE PEOPLE

TitleART BY THE PEOPLE
BrandGE
Product / ServiceGE CORPORATE
CategoryA02. Posters
EntrantBBDO INDIA Gurgaon, INDIA
Entrant Company:BBDO INDIA Gurgaon, INDIA
Design/Advertising Agency:BBDO INDIA Gurgaon, INDIA

Credits

Name Company Position
Josy Paul BBDO India Chief Creative Officer
Sandipan Bhattacharyya BBDO India Executive Creative Director
Bharat Khare BBDO India Creative Team Leader
Arjuna Gaur BBDO India Associate Creative Director
Aditya Gupta BBDO India Account Director
Matt Diiorio BBDO New York Client Services Director
Rajesh Sikroria BBDO India Vice President
Sangeet Pillai BBDO New York Planning Director
Judy Hu GE Corporate Global Executive Director Advertising/Branding
Jason Hill GE Corporate Director/Advertising/Growth Markets
Lindsay Stein GE Corporate Manager
Katie Hankinson BBDO New York Client Services Director
Sara Criss BBDO New York Account Manager
Gurdev Singh BBDO India Art Director
Jitendra Pal Singh BBDO India Studio Manager
Manoj Yogi BBDO India Head Print Production

Brief Explanation

GE has been transforming healthcare, transportation and power in rural India for over 20 years. Despite this, GE is still widely perceived as an American company whose technology is not relevant to grassroots India. So how do we Indianize GE? And send a signal to key opinion leaders and policy makers that GE's technology truly works for India.

The Brief

How do we change GE's perception from being a distant American multinational, to a company that is engaged in making a positive impact on the lives of people at the grassroots in India? The client wanted to demonstrate how GE is a company that's here in India, for India.

How the final design was conceived

Insight: When you make a deep and positive impact on the lives of a community, it starts to reflect in their cultural fabric and folk arts. Idea: What if the campaign was not created by an ad agency, but by the indigenous communities whose lives GE impacted? That would be the greatest proof of their commitment to India. We engaged with tribal artists from rural communities and asked them to use their own unique art forms to depict how GE's technology was improving their lives. We used our advertising space to provide a platform to these artists and help bring back their art into the mainstream.

Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market

This campaign effectively repositioned GE as an Indian company, committed to India's progress at the grassroots level. Especially with bureaucrats and policy makers. Generated huge interest in the media about GE's work in India. FirstPost commented on the campaign - 'GE is instantly less an american multinational and more a multinational that understands India.' Revived mainstream and commercial interest in marginalised art forms like Gond, Madhubani, Saura and Kutch patchwork and opened up opportunities to folk artists to exhibit their work in urban art galleries.