In an overcrowded media environment, overrun by all kinds of brand messages as well as information and entertainment content, ActionAid India set up a very ambitious objective for itself: to create engagement with the Indian educated urban middle class online on a subject that – forget being top of mind – was completely invisible, namely, unpaid women’s work.

Through a short film (in almost documentary style, and not a typical advertising film) created solely for the digital medium, we wanted to draw attention to the need for gender equality and to recognize the role of women in the family and workplace as equal players to men.

For an NGO that had never taken to mass media (in digital or traditional channels), this was a huge step in the direction. With a shoestring production budget, and an experimental media budget that was like the women’s work we set out to create conversations around (“invisible and unpaid”), the metrics that the communication set out to achieve were:

- Create at least 25% increase in the number of Followers / Likes for ActionAid India’s

- Create traction on ActionAid India’s YouTube channel, with at least 250,000 organic views

Our task was to get people everywhere to open their eyes to the obvious yet invisible.

In their lives.

Our strategy was simple:

A short film to address a big problem.

To use the story of Maharashtra’s Water Wives to open the eyes of people everywhere to Water Wives in their own lives.

Through a short film (in almost documentary style, and not a typical advertising film) created solely for the digital medium, we drew attention to the need for gender equality and to recognize the role of women in the family and workplace as equal players to men.

Given the limited (more accurately, complete lack of) media budget, this digital-only campaign used ActionAid India’s owned media—the YouTube, FaceBook and Twitter pages of the brand—to target India’s young, urban, educated, online middle/upper middle classes.

A US$10,000 covered production and media placement.

The results (Source: Client data) were as follows:

- The number of likes on ActionAid India’s FaceBook page went up from 43,967 to 69,712 from pre- to post-campaign, a 59% increase versus the targeted 25%

- The number of followers of ActionAid India’s Twitter handle went up from 1,354 to 2,660 from pre- to post-campaign, a 96% increase versus the targeted 25%

- Against the targeted number of 250,000 organic views on YouTube, the campaign grossed over half a million views, and gained 780 subscribers during the week of the campaign’s release.

Perhaps the best testimony to the success of the campaign was the campaign coverage in news media (including leading publications like India Today, Mint, NDTV) and pop culture sites (such as ScoopWhoop). Advertising Age called it “perhaps the most influential branded film of the year” and Clio recognized it as a benchmark in heightening the debate on gender.