India is a melting pot of cultures, religions with life-practices unique to each region. Known for its heterogeneity, one of the more predominant anomaly still relevant in modern times is the power parity between men and women. In the name of religious conformism, Indians for the longest time have treated women as special beings during the 5-day period cycle. Beyond biases and prejudices, women have had to face confidence issues; worse, they have lost on opportunities. The ones wanting to live a normal life during the cycle are called out, labeled and often subject to ridiculous heckling.
Whisper, leading sanitary pad brand in India has always epitomized the qualities of strength, vigor and empowerment through its communication. The brand wanted to challenge these societal norms and tell women that it’s okay to not give in to these baseless rules. To enable this freedom of choice, the brand unleashed #MeriLifeMereRules (translated in English to #MyLifeMyRules) campaign. The primary motive - eliminate the irrational fear of ‘going out there’ during periods.
Girliyapa, India’s leading women centric channel brings forth real and relatable stories. Whisper’s campaign to empower women aligns with ours making us the ideal partner for the brand. Our objective was to :
Content creation, Distribution Mechanism, and Audience Engagement are the three levers we deployed to achieve our desired objectives.
1. Content Strategy –
A brand partnership is fruitful when it accurately captures insights from the TG’s life, their product truth and brand ethos.
To amplify the #MeriLifeMereRules campaign, we had to build content which empowers, inspires and relates to our core TG. Whisper is a brand that breaks stereotypes and motivates young women by having a brand purpose of empowering women. To bring this purpose alive, we chose a concept based on the time we all fondly remember the most, also the time where young girls have the most number of restrictions in India – the hostel life. Thus was born Girls Hostel, India’s biggest web series of 2018. The show demonstrated girls fighting against patriarchal rules with limitless confidence. Each episode was built on the campaign thought of girls breaking societal shackles and choosing to live their life by their own rules. For instance, girls deciding what to wear, as opposed to what society expects them to wear, questioning the existence of preferential treatment given to boys, and strictness towards girls when it comes to hostel rules.
We wanted to further celebrate the spirit of young women living by their own rules and thus was born a catchy dance anthem with inspirational lyrics – Tu Bas Naach (translated in English to You Just Dance). A Girliyapa original song and video that integrated Whisper’s campaign thought wonderfully. The most impactful line of the song being ‘We don’t give a f*** about none of that shit, Tu Bas Naach.’ It is one of the best shot videos which brought together over 50 women achievers for the first time from different walks of life – top female lawyers, choreographers, an acid attack survivor, etc. among popular rappers, actors and influencers to firmly land the brand messaging.
The characters resonated with the brand’s TG (relate), used our network of channels and influencers to reach women across (inspire) and empowered the audience to spread the message across platforms (empower) thus delivering the brand message in the most effective way.
2. Distribution Mechanism –
We followed a multi-platform release approach with YouTube, Facebook and our OTT platform TVFPlay. We also leveraged top engagement platforms – Instagram and Twitter to create quick snackable snippets from the main content piece driving interest and eventual content consumption that translated into viewership. Furthermore, TVF’s network of influencers drove the show messaging in their micro-communities contributing to virality.
3. Audience Engagement –
We leveraged our social media content – memes, GIFs, funny posts, videos etc.– contests, polls on Instagram, Twitter etc., Insta stories, Behind-the-scenes videos, YouTube community posts, direct call-to-action to viewers, etc. to engage with our fans. High audience engagement drove high virality.
The Return On Objective (ROO) for brands is defined by two factors –
(1) whether the intended messaging was delivered via content
(2) whether the intended TG was reached at sufficient scale.
The series (Girls Hostel) garnered 60+ million views just on YouTube and went on to receive multiple awards locally (Afaqs Media Brand, SAMMIES, ET Brand Equity {part of Times of India})
The anthem (Tu Bas Naach) gathered 2.8+ million views on YouTube. It also won in two categories at Radio City Freedom Awards 2019, a first of its kind platform to honor talent across the Indie music diaspora.
We strongly promoted the content on Girliyapa’s social media channels via over 300 pieces of shoulder content using #MeriLifeMereRules. which led to a reach of 100 million across various platforms.
The social media campaign increased purchase intent among users from 82% to 87% whereas the engagement posts increased brand affinity from 82% to 89% (third party research by Neilsen).
Viewers sharing their personal anecdotes, expressing eagerness of season 2 and always wanting more makes it quite evident that the campaign objective was successfully translated into our content and audience’s minds.
With the distinct voice of Girliyapa, the brand wanted to urge young girls to break the silence on periods. This was clearly brought alive in this empowering and relatable campaign. #MeriLifeMereRules made a cultural impact as well. One that went on to tell our audience that a woman is not and should never be restricted to fly high.
