India is primarily a tea-drinking nation. South Indian states (particularly Tamil Nadu) are an exception to this norm, making 75% of the entire coffee drinking population of the country! In a way, central to Tamil Nadu’s coffee heritage have been the StreetSide coffee stalls, with almost 100,000 street coffee shops peppering every nook and corner of its cities. Moreover, as is the norm, heritage fosters rituals. One ritual in these street-side coffee shops has been “Coffee Swishing” or pouring the coffee between tumblers before serving. This makes the coffee frothier, unlocks the aroma, and is considered by many locals as an authentic way of serving coffee.

Also central to this, are the coffee masters themselves, tirelessly working to fuel entire cities, but largely anonymous & called, “Anna”, a generic term for brother in colloquial terms.

Celebrating coffee-swishing & humanising coffee-masters form the central piece of our campaign.

The TN bus network is one of the largest networks in Asia, forming a critical lifeline for millions of passengers in the state everyday. Most of these passengers are the working class population, that also form the majority consumers of coffee in streetside coffee outlets!

Hence we chose Bus queue shelters, in a way that each shelter was located within 300 metres of our coffee heroes’ shops! Each shelter had a photograph of our coffee hero in action with their names, along with a special message, “Mr. Balasamy, we thank you for your love, passion & grit in giving us the most wonderful coffee moments everyday. You are the real coffee hero of Vadapalani. Have a steamy cup of coffee at Nagaraj Tea Stall, Vadapalani” followed with the location of the shop & call to actions given to consumers to have a steamy, cup of coffee at our partner coffee