Contemporary content creation in the form of films, animations, illustrations and a host of digital assets has risen to influence one’s social perspective and awareness. The team of Shifft Films is committed to understanding the brand spirit and delivering creatives that are powerful and effective in brilliantly demonstrating product-lines. Thus, working with Bangalore Political Action Committee (B.PAC) was an insight to putting together the right content mix through a well thought through research and drive.
B.PAC, as a non-partisan citizen’s group, is an organisation that addresses the city’s issues over a wide spectrum specifically targeting at the conversion of a blithe urban Bangalore into an active hub for positive change and civic efficacy. Thus, aiming at ensuring good and transparent governance as well as enabling an effective engagement with citizens, civic bodies and the government, BPAC is a platform that promotes participative democracy, civic responsibility and responsible election campaigning and candidate awareness. Partnering with BPAC in enhancing the quality life for a Bangalorean was quite overwhelming in the beginning considering the immense amount of activities carried out by the organisation. However, as the founder writer and director of Shifft, Deepti Tarakanath says “the campaigns and programs undertaken by B.PAC are, in practical sense, the need of the hour and my belief in the ethos of BPAC as an organisation was a motivation to work with them, apart from it being an immense opportunity.”
The role of Shifft as a content creation partner was to provide representation or an identity through branding, digital assets as well as video content. Keeping this in mind, the main objective was to make B.PAC’s digital interfaces homogeneous and to regulate the client’s online content by using a common design syntax. Although being an extremely comprehensive organisation, an unerring representation of B.PAC and the coalescence and homogenisation of their wide range of work under various verticals into the spectrum of visual storytelling was a certain challenge. Alongside, communicating the essence and message of B.PAC through visuals in a way that it portrays a clear distinction behind the objectives or the numerous campaigns as well as keeps the content within the common design syntax planned for the client was indispensable.
Shifft has worked with B.PAC from the initial stages of content creation for social media platforms and strengthening their brand image through infographic films, mascot designing, photo features, blog edits, music logo and several collaterals in order to provide a powerful and effective creative pegs that would help the organisation to reach out and be heard by the public and give a visual structure to the client’s objectives and activities.
Creating content in both English and Kannada was a necessary requirement with B.PAC being an active body in Bangalore city. One of the first campaigns was for B.SAFE that involved inviting volunteers (or AGENTS B.SAFE) to rise to the issue of protecting women and children from assault, abuse and molestation in various life spaces. The MLA LAD initiative of the client documented the utilisation of the granted MLA LAD funds and were to be published on online platforms. The Election Habba and My Manifesto, being B.PAC’s intensive participative democracy drives, demanded Shifft to bring in the zeal of the political atmosphere as well as required intense brainstorming of ideas so as to come up with substantial concepts to portray the rooted messages of civic responsibility and to showcase the efforts of the client to advocate civic reforms through the citizens.
The following table elaborates on the creative content developed for the various programmes of B.PAC
| COMMUNICATION STRATEGY | CONTENT NUGGETS | |
|---|---|---|
| 1. B.PAC character | To create a neutral, friendly character with an intention to put across all messages of B.PAC, thus mirroring their stance and role in Bengaluru. | |
| 2. B.SAFE | To develop offline and online content that will mobilise inspired and noble volunteers by converting them from being just bystanders to proactively involved members. | |
| 3. MLA LAD | To develop a powerful series of animation videos and brand material (printed, digital and web) in order to show exactly how each of our 27 MLAs have utilised the granted MLA LAD funds for the development of the local areas they govern. | |
| 4. My Manifesto | To bring in a very focussed participation from citizens and develop material for 15 constituencies. | |
| 5. Election Habba | To develop bold, interesting creatives and also included user-generated content to convey participation in electoral process | |
| 6. B.GREEN | To develop creatives and memorabilia to honour schools and individuals | |
| 7. B.CLIP | To enrol people through innovative ways to become a Civic leader through well-thought courses conducted by BPAC. | |
| 8. Greetings | Customised creatives for each and every occasion in English and Kannada | |
| 9. B.IMPACT |
Storytelling is a powerful tool in persuasion and crafting an outlook. Creating the mascot for BPAC was an interesting challenge. According to Deepti Tarakanath, an amorphous creation with an exclusive identity was deemed best suited for an apolitical organisation like B.PAC. Alongside all the various different strategies and creatives that stemmed for this project, it was necessary to make sure every campaign stood out and minor details such as colour depiction in the content played a pivotal role bringing in a touch of uniqueness.