Cannes Contenders: BBDO India
How will Asia Pacific perform at Cannes this year? In the lead up to the Festival this weekend Campaign Brief is showcasing the work we hope will impress the judges ….
Women in rural India can’t go to schools because of daily chores like having to walk miles to fetch water. As part of the ‘Dream2Advance’ platform, we created a design idea that brings schools nearer to women. The film, which focuses on female education and empowerment, features a young lady who uses her Visa card to mobilise village women to design and stitch the Hindi alphabet on their sarees so that they can teach themselves while going about their daily routine. It captures Indians’ intrinsic desire for empowerment and advancement and how Visa can help you get there. The film was awarded the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, the country’s most prestigious cinema awards, presented annually by the Government of India.
The objective of the communication was to give men one more reason to be clean-shaven every day. We launched a women’s movement called “unshaven is unbathed”. As part of this activity Gillette partnered with Grazia and introduced their women’s magazine with two different covers – to see which one women pick. One cover had the model clean shaven with no body hair. The other cover had the same model sporting a stubble and body hair. These were placed in news-stands and salons in select cities. 83% women picked the magazine with the clean-shaven guy. The activity and movement idea earned Gillette $9.4 million worth of free media…crossing 2.7 million fans on Facebook.
The construction boom in India is creating a huge demand for sand. This has given rise to illegal sand mining. Alarming quantities of sand are being stolen from coastal areas and beaches. This is threatening the ecosystem and creating environmental damage. How do we get the government to stop this illegal activity?
The idea: we buried the activists under sand and held a public conference on the Mumbai’s most prominent beach. This act got us media attention and support from the environment ministry. Leading to a ban on the use of suction pumps, and stricter checks on illegal sand mining.