THE BIG FAT INDIAN WEDDING

Chronicled and presented as a spectacle to the world, the $25 bn wedding industry is growing at 30% annually, consumes 450 tons of gold, and conducts 10mn weddings/year. The average Indian spends a staggering 20% of his lifetime’s earnings on children’s weddings, second only to the investment on the family home.

The culture is held up as a lodestar of realizing a couple's dreams, in the groom's grand arrival on a horse and the bride's finery. Fireworks, bands and sumptuous spreads are pretty much standard for weddings.

DARKNESS BEYOND THE GLITZ

Behind this glitz lurks a dark social evil, the Dowry system - where a family pays a man to take their daughter’s hand in marriage. Roughly every hour a woman is murdered over dowry demands.

Appallingly, the effects of the dowry culture can be traced to the womb. It is the primary cause of female foeticide and bears a direct correlation with female infanticide as poorer parents avoid the lifelong liability of saving up for a daughter's marriage. This has led to a distorted sex ratio of 933 girls per 1,000 boys in India.

Dowry is a legal offence, yet the practice is rampant.

The Big Idea : DON’T BE A BAD PENNY AND SAY NO TO DOWRY

India is the land of “arranged” marriages where parents finalize weddings of their children. The bride and the groom have very little say other than just giving a tacit acceptance to their parent’s choices of partners. The ‘task” of dowry “negotiations” is the parents’ prerogative. Unwittingly, in these negotiations, parents of the groom end up putting a “price point” for their son.

This is what we wanted to break. Our strategy hinged on getting the prospective groom to stand up and say “No More”, and that he would not get married for dowry. We told the groom, to not be a Bad Penny and say No to dowry.

We challenged established social norms, questioned the dowry system, and spoke directly to the groom on whose head a price (in the name of dowry) was being fixed.

CREATED THE ANTI-DOWRY TORCH RALLY: This was flagged off by the Chief Minister expressing hope that post campaign, not giving dowry will become a status symbol. The rally traveled through 38 districts in its 3000 km journey. Over 15 mn people were directly participated.

AGENDA SETTING: With 800 pages of editorial content published, we brought the issue into public sphere. Highlights:

- Letters of Courage: 20 letters were published - Sons telling fathers they won’t take dowry, and daughters telling fathers they wouldn’t marry a “bad penny”.

- Celebrating “Good Pennies”: 20 Stories of people who married without dowry

- 17 Celebrity appeals saying no to dowry

- Celebrating champions of change : Profiled 20 groups crusading against the dowry system

MESSAGE AMPLIFICATION:

- 115 Bike rallies

- 1672 Street theatres

- Print, Radio and outdoor campaign

- 6000 children created themed paintings

- 2,25,000 signatures supporting the campaign

IMPACT ON BRAND

- Market Leadership : Dainik Jagran overtook the market leader and became the No.1 newspaper in Patna with a Total Readership of 5,95,000.

- Readership Gains : We recorded our highest ever readership figure of 12.6mn in Bihar

- Brand Awareness : Total awareness at par with the market leader

- Increase in Time spent on the newspaper : + 10% vs last year

- Perception score : “This newspaper makes me a better citizen” : +3% over last track

Source : Brand Track, Dec 2017, Indian Readership Survey 2017

PEOPLE ADOPTED THE CAMPAIGN: 42 Civil society organizations, 14 government departments and several associations echoed our message. People created videos, films, anthems and paintings in support.

THE DILEMMA OF DOWRY

For the rich, giving dowry is a status symbol, while for the poor, it’s about salvaging honor.

Ironically, while education is touted as a cure-all for social malaises, educated grooms demand higher dowries. Informal “Rate Cards” for grooms abound. Education is reduced to just another factor that determines your ‘market rate’.

TIME FOR A REVOLUTION

We asked “Is this how we should treat our daughters?

This problem is homespun. To effect profound social change, the revolution needs to return to the source: it needs to start at home. What will it take for the groom, to say he won’t take dowry? Society must unequivocally reject dowry. The rejection has to be tripartite, involving rectitude by the giving party, the receivers and the wedding guests who in their very indulgence of the festivities, encourage the practice. Thus began our campaign “Don’t be a Bad Penny”

Dainik Jagran exists to shift the collective consciousness of people and transform lives to create a better world and a better future….because an awakened individual is one who goes beyond the barriers of his own mind and lives life in a larger context.

To live this vision of our brand, we draw from the very core of our newspaper’s editorial philosophy which has 7 Principles as its foundation – Women Empowerment, Environment Protection, Population Management, Poverty Eradication, Health, Education, and Water Conservation. These were intrinsically linked to the country’s progress. Everyday, across our pages we necessarily carry stories of change, of challenges, of hope and of crusaders across any of these domains.

Gender issues, therefore are a core priority of the brand.

While there are multiple dimensions to the gender issue, we decided to confront a social issue which is illegal, yet had widespread sanction, and often dusted under the carpet. Our campaign sought to address the dark social evil of the Dowry System in India with the specific objectives to :

- Create a mass revolution against the social evil of dowry

- Demonstrate that Dainik Jagran stands for community and equal rights