Life is Beautiful - '66 human lives - beautiful all over again'

Challenge

Pond's was synonymous with beauty for women in India. The brand wanted further cement its bond with consumers. The challenge was to go beyond giving great products to achieve this strong bonding. In 2011, breast cancer caused 50,000 deaths in India. Pond's decided to stand against this dreaded disease, in order to take its relationship with its consumers beyond its products.

Insight

Consumer Insight showed that 86% of the women were unaware about the consequences of breast cancer and the 14% who were aware about the consequences hardly went for a medical check-up because they thought the test will be painful, and they were afraid of the result. But the key insight was that the Indian woman always played the role of a nurturer for her family and this is at the cost of neglecting her health.

Strategy

Pond's wanted to play a meaningful role and so initiated action by taking up the cause: 'Pond's Let's Pink - a breast cancer awareness campaign'. Pond's wanted to communicate the message through a trusted source in which women have faith. Realising that a woman will always trust and listen to her husband, the brand chose married men as the primary target audience.

For the first time a brand redefined romance beyond flowers and candies, and asked husbands to show their wives that they truly cared by ensuring she is safe and healthy. Pond's tied up with media partner Bennett & Coleman Co. Pvt Ltd (BCCL), India's largest and most respected media house which reaches a majority of the cities in India through print, radio, digital or television.

Execution

On 18 October, husbands woke up to post-it notes on the front page of The Times of India newspaper (TOI). Each note reminded him about his wedding wows. In addition to that, BCCL's Radio Mirchi changed its station ID from 'It's hot" to 'Let's Pink' and the RJ's became the voice of the campaign.

The post-it note innovation was followed by 7 back-to-back editorial articles educating people on breast cancer. TOI created a dedicated editors team who wrote articles about breast cancer but in Pond's tone of voice. Times of India were also able to rope in celebrities who became major influencers.

Men were able to convince women to go for a medical check-up by qualified experts at partnered hospitals where free preliminary check-ups were made available. The healthcare tie ups were made possible by Red Cell, a TOI subsidiary.

This was further amplified by embedding augmented reality in print communication leading them to the Facebook page and the list of hospitals.

Results

In a short span of 7 days, across 5 cities where this communication was deployed, the campaign reached out to 3.3 million men, including 1.6 million husbands. It also educated over 2 million women about the disease. 6,670 self-test videos were downloaded, 3,289 free tests were conducted at the partnered hospitals, 66 live cases were detected with breast cancer through the 'Lets Pink' initiative and underwent cure processes.