HarperCollins celebrates 25 years in India with short film

The film starts with an old man holding the novel whilst traveling in a bus. As the bus stops at a church, he forgets the novel behind. A young man notices the book and picks it up to give it to him but the bus leaves. We see a young woman board the same bus and take the seat adjacent to the young man. She notices the book in the young man’s hands. Seeing her interested in the book, the young man hands it to her and leaves as his stop comes.

What she finds written on the first page of the novel gives the film an unexpected twist.

The film ends with the sentence, “Stories create books. Books create stories.” and the HarperCollins India logo.

The campaign was created by Dentsu One.

The campaign was launched at the Jaipur Literature Festival 2017. The film was launched on social media on January 20.

“We made this short film to celebrate our lifelong passion for storytelling, something that simply reaffirmed the power of stories and the fact that books open up a world of unimaginable possibilities,” said Ananth Padmanabhan, CEO, HarperCollins India. “And in Dentsu One, we found the perfect partner.”

“In the advertising business, we keep talking about how we are all storytellers. Here was an intriguing brief that had us create a story about stories, without the storyteller intruding. When we asked Ananth ‘What do you want to happen as a result of this?’ he said, ‘The outcome I want is for the viewer to say I want to pick up a book now! after seeing the film.’ The insight was—in retrospect—very simple. Each of us is a story-creator, sometimes not knowing that’s what we are, mostly not knowing what triggers await us around the corner. That’s the basic reason books appeal to us: they tell the stories we believe we could have created. After all, our lives are a series of stories,” said Narayan Devanathan, group executive and strategy officer, Dentsu India.

“HarperCollins is such an iconic brand with about 200 years of history. It was a great experience to work on this brand. Ananth’s brief took me back to my literature days. Books contain stories. But I thought there are stories that exist outside the books as well. That’s how the line came up. Books create stories. Several stories emerged from this line. We just decided to break the campaign with the Firoza one,” said Titus Upputuru, NCD, Dentsu One.

“Narayan's love for the written word and Titus' spontaneous creative impulse were the perfect combination. We all have a story and we love stories - and we thought that this was a great way to say it,” Padmanabhan concluded.

The film is available in Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o18AdAI47sQ.