India, February 10th, 2023: Valentine’s Day- a cultural commemoration of love and romance, is around the corner and while the 14th of February is generally celebrated the world over as the day of love and affection, a love interest could also be something other than the usual, and cherished with equal passion.
redBus, a MakeMyTrip group company, and the world’s largest intercity bus ticketing platform, has released a short video to that effect, as a tribute to those whose first love is travelling. The 54-second film drives this narrative and calls out the message – ‘This Valentine’s Day, chalo #PyaarKeRaaste redBus ke saath’, encouraging and enticing people to have a passionate love affair with travelling. The film also concurs with redBus’ larger brand narrative of ‘Apno ko, sapno ko kareeb laye’, that calls upon people to bring their loved ones and dreams closer with redBus.
About the film:
The short, but captivating film elucidates the excitement of two people, who are deeply in love and captures the viewer’s imagination, through their subtle expressions of love. Jaswanth Bopanna of MTV Roadies and Kannada Big Boss fame, plays the role of a young man, in his early 20’s who tries to strike a conversation with his beloved, talking about his journey and anticipation to reach there, while the young lady, expresses how much she missed her love and despises the long distance between them. The viewers don’t see the two in the same frame though. The young man then goes on to profess his love with the utterance of those three magical words- ‘I love you’, at which point the frame zooms out to reveal his location to be a tea estate on the mountain, while the young lady’s location is revealed to be a beautiful beach. All the while, they were actually in love and conversing independently with their favourite destinations and not each other, as implied visually in the storytelling of the film. This unanticipated climax, astounds and then soothes the viewer, as the narrator calls out- ‘Jab travelling se ho pyaar toh khul ke karo izhaar!. The film ends with the tagline- ‘Pyaar ke raaste’, or being in love with the journeys.
Speaking on the video, Pallavi Chopra, Senior Vice President and Head of Marketing, redBus, said, “While we all know Valentine’s Day embodies love and affection among people, we took a slightly different approach of connecting the day with people’s love for travel. In the film, the destination takes centre stage, depicted in a very romantic way as a passionate love interest of the traveller. The concept originates from the larger brand narrative of redBus- ‘Apno ko, sapno ko kareeb laye’, which aptly captures the proposition of the platform as one that connects people with each other, as well as with their dreams. Moving a step further, this video entices people to go out and reveal the destination they love the most, to the world, through the narrative, ‘Jab travelling se ho pyaar toh khul ke karo izhaar!’. With this video, we intend to encourage people to develop a fondness and desire for travel as they would for their Valentine.”
Apart from redBus’ YouTube page, this film is also available on the brand’s Instagram, Facebook and Twitter handles.
redBus is also running an exciting contest this season for like-minded individuals, seeking their comment below the video, on the destination that’s their true love and win a FREE trip to that destination*. Users get brownie points if they shoot a reel of them saying ‘I Love You’ to their favourite destination, as seen in the film itself.