As India’s leading truck maker, it has been incumbent upon Tata Motors to often go beyond the obvious call of duty (profitability) to pioneer solutions for larger issues that often threaten the entire category. One particularly difficult issue was creating awareness & propagating safe sex in the trucking fraternity, the largest group of working professionals in India, that suffer from AIDS. Most truckers who engage with commercial sex workers are unaware of the consequences of unprotected sex. And despite government interventions, no one has ever addressed the trucker’s plight with focus, creativity and scale.

India’s leading truck maker, Tata Motors, wanted to go beyond profitability to creating awareness & propagating safe sex in the trucking fraternity, the largest group of working professionals in India, that suffer from AIDS. In India, as a mandate, every truck has the line ‘USE DIPPER AT NIGHT’ at the back - alluding to the use of low beam to avoid the headlight at night. So we created a condom brand and named it ‘DIPPER’. The target audience ‘the truckers’ now also became the carriers of the message across the remotest of places where media couldn’t reach. They propagated safe sex by just driving their trucks across the length and breadth of the Indian Highway. The condoms were distributed at medical clinics, service centers, restaurants, petrol pumps, convenience stores and touch points frequented by the trucker on the remote highways of India, across every state of India.

Dipper was a pioneering idea that allowed a message to be relentlessly present across India’s most media-barren places – the highways. By leveraging on an ambient, mandated message, we made the target audience (in this case truckers), the carriers of the message across the remotest of places where media couldn’t reach. They propagated safe sex by just driving their trucks across the length and breadth of the Indian Highway – which happens to be the 2nd largest roadway in the world. They reminded each other to use DIPPER condoms at night. The condoms themselves were distributed at medical clinics, service centers, restaurants, petrol pumps, convenience stores and touch points frequented by the trucker on the remote highways of India, across every state of India.