BBC: SAY CONDOM, ALOUD

Credits:

Type of Entry: Use of Mixed Media
Category: Use of Mixed Media
Title: SAY CONDOM, ALOUD
Advertiser/Client: BBC WORLD SERVICE TRUST
Product/Service: SOCIAL AWARENESS
Entrant Company: MADISON MEDIA Mumbai, INDIA
Media Agency: MADISON MEDIA Mumbai, INDIA
Creative Credits
Name Company Position
Basabdatta Chowdhuri Madison Media CEO
Harit Pant Madison Media Account Director
Manish Pundir Madison Media Sr. Planning Manager
Details
Results and Effectiveness:
•The campaign has reached 139 million adult men nationally •400,000 people participated in the contest riddle; 475,000 people asked for the condom ringtone download through the SMS short code, 200,000 downloaded the ringtone from the website •The ringtone also received footage across national dailies, American press, NPR, Indian TV and Colombian radio. Over 200 portals have written about the condom ringtone. •Message comprehension (‘talk about condoms’) rose from 2% to 61%, likeability from 71% to 89% • The SMS opinion poll saw over 80% saying condom is an acceptable word •As per NACO, (National Aid Control Organization of India). Condom sales through government channels grew by 85.0 million units during April to October 2008.
Creative Execution:
We started our “Say-CONDOM-Aloud” campaign with a contest where the consumer had to answer a riddle, the answer to which was the word “CONDOM”. Since our objective was to make the consumer “SAY” condom, the only mode of participation was by calling a voice portal. In the second leg, we created a buzz by leveraging the creative in which the words “Kabbadi” used by the players in a popular local sport got replaced with the word “CONDOM”. We got editorials in Newspapers and radio anchors to report a fictitious tournament in which the players used the word “CONDOM” instead of “Kabbadi”. This acted as a lead-in to a debate asking consumers for their opinion about saying the word “CONDOM” in public In the third leg, we then targeted the consumer’s craze for having ringtones on the mobile phones. The audaciousness of this ring tone generated huge PR and WOM again around condoms. We bombarded the consumer with “in your face” or rather “in your mouth” advertising at its best.
Insights, Strategy and the Idea:
THE MARKETING CHALLENGE: Getting consumers to accept “CONDOMS” as a personal care product & increase the use of condoms, in a country like India where condom usage is abysmally low (15-20%) and anything associated with “sex” is taboo in public, the word “CONDOM” is anathema - THE CONSUMER INSIGHT: Unless one can say the word “CONDOM” aloud in public without hesitation, one will never be able to go to a pharmacy and ask for a “CONDOM”; THE VALIDATION: Quantitative and qualitative research done by the AIDS foundation showed that consumers tend to be far less inhibited about using condoms, if they have overcome the barrier of being able to talk about it. THE COMMUNICATION OBJECTIVE: To engineer acceptability for condoms, we hence decided to create “Say-CONDOM-aloud” scenarios in media where the consumer had to say the word “CONDOM” aloud and thereafter start a discussion about condoms.