When they left for Kanha my son told his mother that the driver was ‘reeking of liquor’ but she laughed it off with the words that “he must have had a drink at night.” Thus far everything had been perfect, just as a holiday should be. A little while later, the driver stopped the car and disappeared, to return a few minutes later. They were off again only for the driver to stop some time later and disappear behind shops. This time when they returned, my son smelled liquor on the man’s breath and promptly nudged his mother.

They continued to Kanha and around 10 km later, once they had reached the outskirts of Mandla, they noticed that the driver was driving almost on the right side of the road! The man was so drunk he hadn’t even noticed. My wife tried to convince him to stop the car and let her take over the wheel, but the guy didn’t budge. When they kept telling him about it, the man moved the car a little to the middle of the road, until at one point a three-wheeler tempo ran straight into them. There was a resounding thud and parts of either vehicle were flying around.

As a crowd collected the driver of the car decided that the best way out of the mess was to take off with car and shaken passengers – which is what he did, only to be chased by the people in the tempo. The chase continued for a quite a few kms, and in the meantime, my wife started calling Madhya Pradesh State Tourism Development officials to tell them about the incident. The officials were then in constant touch with every few minutes to check about their well-being, also telling them that they had dispatched another vehicle.

In the meantime, drunk driver along with car with passengers was reaching an unmanned level crossing with the tempo still in hot pursuit. As they neared the crossing, the passengers, to their horror saw a train approaching. The driver, of course, was too far gone by then to notice anything. They started screaming at him to stop, but the crazy guy, desperate to shake off the tempo on his tail, raced towards the oncoming train.

My son and wife say they don’t know how the guy managed to cross the railway line. Had they been a few seconds off they and the car would have been sitting on the railway engine! Once they had crossed and were finally rid of the chasing tempo, they spotted the replacement car a few kms later, which waved them down. Only then did things return to normal. I guess, in all this drama, the two people who remained cool for most of the time were the MP Tourism officials and my wife!

Moral of the story: When the driver disappears at short intervals during a long drive and then starts flirting with the road divider, he’s either ingesting ‘liquids’ or passing it out.

Done by Ogilvy and Mather Mumbai, this insanely creative ad is unique and yet it doesn’t delve from the theme set by its predecessors. The voice over still evokes the thought of a storyteller and the jingle successfully creates an aura of a culturally vibrant place. It is most fascinating to see that the sights and sounds of MP being spoken about are same across the three ads (Sanchi Stupa, rich wildlife, Jahaz Mahal, Bhopal Lake, Marble Mountains etc)

The shadow-graphers (brought in from Bengal) have done a splendid job and have got the lost art of shadowgraphy back to life. The shadows melt and blend to form new ones, and effortlessly take you through the best of MP. The whole craft is very cleverly done; it is seamless.

Though my personal favorite among the MP ads is still the one with dancing eyeballs, the new commercial lives up to the expectations and is, beyond a ‘shadow’ of doubt, one of the best state tourism ads in India.

See the commercial here:

Read some more here: A ‘Campaign India’ Article