Happy mcgarrybowen India and Ola post drunk tweets to discourage driving under the influence
Drunk driving is a pervasive problem in our society, while the Government of India has rolled out several initiatives, spreading awareness urging people to not ‘drink and drive’ continues to be critical. In continued commitment towards promoting safe driving, Ola, India’s most popular mobile app for transportation launched the ‘#PeekeMatChala’ initiative, conceptualized by Happy mcgarrybowen, to discourage drunken driving during the New Year festivities.
The last week of December usually witnesses’ revelry and parties across the country, everyone is celebrating the end of the year and welcoming the new year. With these celebrations, cases of drunken driving also tend to increase. It provided for the perfect opportunity to bridge the gap between the growing problems with an already existing convenient solution – booking an Ola cab if one is under the influence of alcohol, to ensure a safe ride back.
The challenge, however, was how to talk to consumers in a way to make them sit back and take notice. The campaign needed to be fun and relatable. Staying true to the brand’s tonality Happy mcgarrybowen took this serious problem by the horns and sent the message in a cheeky way, leading to a social media stunt that had not been pulled by any brand before. At a time when several social media hacks have been seen, Ola smartly used this trend to land the message of ‘don’t drink and drive’.
Several ‘drunk tweets‘ went out of the brand’s twitter handle on the evening of 25th December 2016. Ola even tagged brands like Zomato, Flipkart, Netflix India in some of their tweets besides tagging popular content providers such as AIB and TVF. As expected, it almost immediately grabbed the attention of the social world. Some wondered if the social media manager was drunk on the job, while many questioned if an intern was left unattended.
The activity concluded with Ola confirming that the last few tweets were just to drive the awareness of not driving when drunk. The entire Drunk Tweets campaign can be seen here.
The activity was amplified with the All India Bakchod association, who created the now hugely popular video #PeekeMatChala:
The campaign was finally signed off with online influencers like Varun Thakur, Kanan Gill, Rohan Joshi, Tanmay Bhat, Sumukhi Suresh, Kaneez Surka and the like, driving home the point further with #PeekeNahiChala, inviting Twitterati to talk about the most embarrassing moment under the influence of alcohol.
Kartik Iyer – CEO, Happy mcgarrybowen said, “Ola is a brand that lives and breathes on Indian roads. It’s is a constant effort for the brand to try and improve the condition of people’s lives on roads. Drunken driving is a common and very big issue. Ola is not a preachy brand but one that speaks the language of the people. Drunk tweets was a fun way for the brand to make its point and get people to notice. Not only did people notice but they also had fun and participated in the idea. We had an absolute blast working on this one”.
“Ola’s #PeekeMatChala campaign was specially created to encourage the people of India to enjoy the holiday season responsibly. We are delighted to be associated with content creators like Happy mcgarrybowen in using a novel way to deliver this message. The campaign saw magnificent traction. We believe we succeeded as millions of people across the country chose Ola for their commute needs during the year end festivities,” added Raghuvesh Sarup, Head of Categories and CMO at Ola.