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Tag: slogans

  • How Durex got folks in the wrong mood at IIT Mumbai’s Mood Indigo

    How Durex got folks in the wrong mood at IIT Mumbai’s Mood Indigo

    MUMBAI: Humour in advertising  can really strike a funny bone  and have  us doubling over in laughter! It can be a great conversation starter, leader and silence breaker. And a great ad re-caller. However, it all depends on where the humorous advertising is being placed.

    The Indian Institutes of Technology are known to be filled with the super intelligent young folk, actually young adults, but they are also the places where the most amount of things that should not happen, happen. Especially after studying and assignment  time are over.

    Fun, gags, leg pulling, and several other un-mentionable things take place as some of  the mild engineering students in the day turn into evil Hydes late in the evening. Surely, they will know how to take a joke, right?

    Wrong! As the condom brand Durex from the Reckitt Benckiser stable discovered. 

    Durex chose to sponsor the very famous IIT Moodi Indigo festival in Mumbai in a bid to create awareness about safe sex with protection. (During Mood I fest really, where smoking up is pretty common and you find folks cozying up in hidden nooks and crannies, at least it was the case at one time – the professors and the dean would never guess!).

    Mood Indigo Durex

    Durex decided to take the  ‘pun’ning  route to educate the young ‘adult AI, ML, LLM-obsessed students, many of whom are culturing and  nurturing unicorn start up ideas in their heads.

    The Durex standees had tongue in cheek (pun intended again) slogans: “Always up for a good screw,” “Mood U and I. Play with Durex,” “Here the Feelings are always real! We don’t fake around!,””Here because we found the Jee spot. Play with Durex,””Tonight Won’t Come Twice,””I am always a late-comer” and so on.

    Guess the slogans were, and are worth a laugh. 

    Or at least a giggle.  

    Not for some students though.  They rose up as a crowd and voiced their complaints against the so called “vulgar” jokes.

    And guess what?

    While Durex condoms offer protection, no one came forward to protect Durex. The standees had to be prematurely withdrawn and stacked up in a corner hidden from sight.

    The joke really backfired on Durex.

    So did Durex go wrong?

    Some like experienced marketer and brand custodian Arpita  Yadav think so.

    “Everyone, including me loves the quirk that Durex brings on to their social media, even ads. But not sure if I have ever seen it in an outdoor setting, let alone on a college campus. I am all in for educating kids, but don’t think campus authorities could have ever approved this. Imagine the backlash from parents, teachers, and some students. I am actually on the fence about this one: humour might be the best way for spreading awareness, but is it?,” posted Yadav on Linkedin. (Her post on Linkedin has started quite a discussion on whether Durex was right or wrong; the scales seemed to be weighted in favour of wrong place, at the time of writing.)

    So agency executives and brand managers, hope you will learn from this. It’s different strokes for different folks. (once again, pun intended). 

    (A big thank you to Arpita Yadav for the pictures as well. No copyright infringement is intended)

  • ‘Blow The Whistle’ for road safety campaign

    ‘Blow The Whistle’ for road safety campaign

    MUMBAI: SABMiller India’s ‘Respect the Road’- Don’t drink and drive campaign, launched ‘Blow The Whistle’ initiative on digital media to promote the message of responsible drinking and overall road safety.

    As a part of this initiative, people would be given whistles to blow against all kinds of road and traffic offenders e.g. signal jumpers, rash drivers, people indulging in drinking and driving etc.

    Respect the Road is India’s biggest Don’t drink and drive campaign on digital platform. Going beyond highlight the perils of drunk driving, the Facebook page of the campaign will now also highlight dangerous and risky road behavior leading to road accidents and fatalities.

    SABMiller India VP sustainability and communications Meenakshi Sharma said: “Promoting responsible drinking is one of the core sustainable priorities for SABMiller worldwide.  Through ‘Respect the Road’- Don’t drink and drive campaign, we promote responsible drinking encouraging people to use alternatives to drinking and driving such as calling a cab, hiring a chauffeur or designating a buddy to drive. Blow The Whistle initiative is an extension of our campaign and goes a step further to involve people giving them the responsibility to take action and spread the word about road safety. We are confident that people will step out of their comfort zones and blow the whistle against road offenders.”

    The page will showcase whistle creatives and images of people blowing whistles at traffic offenders. The objective is to involve people and encourage them to participate in this campaign to address the issue of road safety. People can post pictures of road offenders, share their experiences and testimonials of blowing whistles at offenders and send in pictures and videos of what/who would they blow the whistle against. The campaign would also urge people to help the victims in a road mishap and respond when they hear a whistle on the street.

    Geek Creative CEO Mayank Agarwal said: “Blow The Whistle was conceptualized as an initiative to involve people on ground and encourage them to take up the issue of road safety. Through social media, we will engage with people through pictorial representations, participation through quizzes, contests and encourage people to use a whistle against traffic and road offenders. Our strategy involves a 360 degree integration of the top digital platforms to connect with our audience and spread awareness about road safety.”

    The campaign will be taken on ground during the festive season this year where people can come and share their thoughts on making the roads safer. Whistles will be distributed to people for them to blow it against the road offenders and rule breakers. Other engaging activities like quizzes, street plays will be organised to create awareness about the campaign and the issue of road safety.

    The campaign has staged interactive street plays on responsible drinking, tied up with radio station urging listeners to pledge for responsible drinking and associated with cab services to spread the message of responsible drinking and road safety.

    The Facebook page of the campaign (https://www.facebook.com/respecttheroad) is highly interactive with more than 30,000 followers. Recently a safety shayari contest was organised where twitteratis tweeted Road Safety slogans in form of Shayari along with the hashtag # Blow the Whistle. Within hours both Blow the Whistle and Safety Shayari hashtags # were trending all over India and the campaign reached to over one lakh people.

    SABMiller India’s ‘Respect the Road’- Don’t drink and drive campaign has partnered with Home Safe, Delhi NCR’s first chauffeur service, popular radio taxi providers Mega Cabs and radio station Radio City 91.1 FM.