Branded Entertainment is still in a very nascent stage in Indian communication/advertising space. Very less brands tell the story where the brand is not directly connected to it. Content creation, branded entertainment, crowd sourcing is still not the part of Indian advertising mix.

THE BRIEF:

Dabur Vatika Shampoo needed a platform to connect with today’s women. Brief was to create a campaign where the brand can have conversation and emotional engagement with the audience through a relevant and scalable idea. In India a women is considered beautiful only if she has long hair. The objective of the brand here is to go beyond this superficial beauty aspect and talk about the beauty, which comes from within.

*THE STRATEGY:

From this insight the campaign’ brave & Beautiful’ was created, in which the brand takes a stance for Cancer survivor, expressed in the statement- Some people don’t need hair to look beautiful.

A 4-minute digital film was created, which shows the journey of a cancer survivor from being apprehensive about her look to confidently facing the world. The campaign was first launched on Digital and later through print and DTH in 1st phase. Mobile, Radio, Outdoors, activation, Product innovation in phase 2. A song called- Tu faulad hai tu hai phool (You are like concrete, you are the flower) was created which salutes this undying spirit of a female cancer survivor. A celebrated Bollywood singer-music director- Salim merchant sang the song and it was got an instant connect with the Natioan. The song was used in the film and as the film has no dialogues, the song does the job of taking the story forward. Later the song was palyed as a part of regular programming on radio channels.

THE EXECUTION:

As a response to campaign the brand got approx. 28,000 survivor stories. On the basis of that print ads and videos were created with real survivors as the face.

The videos and ads were shared on social media as a second lag of the campaign.

All the survivors were felicitated in 'Brave & Beautiful awards'.

The film was shared online on you tube and went viral within two days of sharing. It was shared by people on social media, was taken up by digital media websites like ScoopWhoop (Indian equivalent of Buzzfeed).

The links of the film was tweeted from Brand’s official twitter handle. After the initial digital campaign, later the film was tweeted and shared by Indian film celebrities like Priyanka Chopra (National Award winner) and Sonakshi Sinha.

*THE RESULT:

The campaign joined the million-dollar club organically, and became the most shared video of India. It got-

-Over 50 million views

-Over a million likes

-More than 30,00,000 shares

-One billion global digital impressions

-Dabur vatika launched a product innovation called B&B shampoo made for cancer survivors

-All the survivors were felicitated in ‘brave & beautiful awards’

-Brand got free media coverage and PR of approx. 5,00,000 us dollars

The film, ‘Brave & Beautiful’ is the story of a female cancer survivor, who is apprehensive about her bald look. In India hair is an integral part of a woman’s beauty and when because of chemotherapy, she loses hair, it becomes very difficult for her to handle the trauma. In the story, leading lady goes through the same feeling but in the end she overcomes all the apprehensions and goes out bare head, andy the world welcomes her with open arms.

Whole story emotionally involves audience and has no presence of the brand there. But at the same time, the story is about hair. Here, Dabur vatika shampoo, irrespective of being a hair care brand signs off the film with a brave statement- Some people don’t need hair to look beautiful.

This paradox created by the brand is unprecedented in Indian hair care communication.