West Bengal Tourism’s New Brand Reveal Gets Roasted — Eiffel Tower, Pyramids, Barely Any Bengal

Viewers spotted the Eiffel Tower, Egypt’s pyramids, Moscow’s Saint Basil’s Cathedral and Rio’s Christ the Redeemer packed into a film meant to sell Bengal. Beyond a fleeting shot of Howrah Bridge, the state’s own hills, Sundarbans, Darjeeling, heritage streets and coastline barely registered — and X filled up with the obvious punchline: Where is Bengal?

The new line — ‘West Bengal: Where India feels different’ — is meant to broaden the old emotional equity of ‘Experience Bengal – The Sweetest Part of India’. Online, critics argued it reads more like a generic India pitch than a place brand with a sharp, ownable hook. TMC MP Derek O’Brien called the work “Tacky. Trashy. Thooo.” BJP veteran Tathagata Roy labelled the video “amateurish” and asked why Moscow, Egypt and Rio belonged in a West Bengal tourism spot.

Tourism Minister Dr Shankar Ghosh has since tried to cool the heat: he said the viral clip was only a logo reveal, not the full brand film, and that a technical glitch blocked the main film at the launch. He points audiences to the fuller brand film on official social handles — and asks people not to let “social media noise” define a campaign that has “just begun.”

Marketing take: Destination brands live or die on visual ownership. When your first frame set looks like a world tour, the audience will ask the only question that matters — and your ₹500 crore roadmap will wait until the creative answer is unmistakably Bengal.

MAM editorial team The strategists and writers at Mad About Marketing, writing up what we see in the work every week.