T2's lessons for marketers

Airports are gateways to cities. But most differ only in scale, and lack the flavour of their cities

Nothing exudes more laziness than the tendency to create something similar or slightly better. The sameness syndrome symbolises the mediocrity we suffer in modern times. This monoculture is manifested through many media; take for instance, infrastructure and modern architecture. Under the garb of standardisation and globalisation, modern-day cities are increasingly appearing similar.

Twenty-five years back, when I traveled aboard, each airport, city and its taxis, signage, people,architecture and food used to look, feel and smell different. Each city and country had its own identity and personality. Not long ago, Paris, Zürich, Bangkok, Beijing and New Delhi were free of ugly glass buildings. Today, if you take a drive on the freeways of Gurgaon, New Delhi, it feels like you are driving in downtown San Jose, California. The recently built airports at Hyderabad, New Delhi and Beijing look identical. They differ in terms of their scale and capacity but they don't leave you with a flavour of the city.

Airports are the gateways to a country, its culture and its feel; and here is where I applaud the creators of Mumbai's international airport's new terminal T2, for keeping Mumbai and India alive, and not compromising on facilities and grandeur. The new terminal built by the GVK-led consortium is much beyond a functional airport. It is the idea of India that is powerful and modern, yet rooted in tradition.

Designed by the American architect firm, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, a white-peacock theme runs through T2. There is ample natural light and T2 beats the heat with 77,000 plants of 80 species. Electric lights pour through beautiful lotus-shaped handcrafted chandeliers designed by Sandeep Khosla and Abu Jani. The jewel in this crown is the 3-km-long 'Jaya He' programme, a collection of thousands of artifacts and paintings, curated by the award-winning Rajeev Sethi. It brings alive the kaleidoscope of Indian culture as crafted by more than 1,500 artists, representing themes from the ancient to the contemporary. This main attraction of the swanky new terminal took about three years to curate, including the restoration of the art pieces and costs less than a per cent of the project's cost.

It is heartening to see that an airport was envisioned not only for technical achievements but also as the largest public art gallery, and here is where it touches a cord and you get emotionally attached.

The grand terminal talks to marketers and anyone who is in the business of creating - it is not only about being better but being relevant. It's not about having 500 friends on Facebook but having that one friend on whose shoulder you can cry, it's about saying 'daag ache hain' when others compete to be the whites, it's about creating a McAloo Tikki only for India... When you tap the culture, you become relevant to your customers, you can shock your customers by a 41-megapixel camera in the phone but by saying "Here's to the crazy ones…The round pegs in the square holes", they would also start loving the brand.

To sum up, "sameness is the mother of disgust, (relevant) variety the cure".

The author is National Creative Director, Leo Burnett