When the Prime Minister of India speaks from the ramparts of the Red Fort, one expects him to announce grandiose big-ticket schemes. One was then pleasantly surprised to hear him talk about a cleaner India. The need is very real. The challenge is huge. Then we saw the public relations pictures of high society personalities and celebrities awkwardly wielding brooms in their specially designed clothes and groaned that this was going nowhere.

Well, we are glad to report that things seem to be back on track again. The Government’s Swachh Bharat advertising campaign is a welcome step. Sustained, creative communication is an absolute necessity if one has to see any impact. Grey World’s TV commercial (TVC) shows actual situations where the people-next-door are littering (a person in a car throwing out a plastic bottle, a lady dumping garbage from her window, a person throwing things in a village lake and a gentleman squatting to relieve himself while he waits for the village bus).

These are all very real situations, we see them every day. And I liked the response to each of these situations: The citizens around the offender broke out into derisive applause. This is something we can all do — clap derisively if we see someone littering. It is not provocative. It shames the person. I liked the voice-over at the end as well. The direct, no-holds-barred script forcefully tells the offenders to have some shame and not dirty the surroundings.

I genuinely believe that if Grey and the Government could persist with the clapping as a repetitive symbol of shaming the offender while they change the overall creative in the next campaign (I am hoping there will be a next campaign), it can well become a national symbol of embarrassing or even shaming a litterbug.

Bank on this one

Financial inclusion is another great necessity for the country. And the Government has once again happily relied on the professional expertise of an advertising agency (RKSwamy BBDO) to communicate the message that the poorest of the poor can open a bank account. The scheme was launched in a manner that shattered all expectations. I am glad to read that the Government is actually revising its own ambitious targets and going for gold, so to say, by the end of the financial year.

The agency can definitely take some of the credit. The TVC running for the Jan Dhan Yojana is simple, straightforward and communicates effectively with its target audience. OK, maybe I didn’t like the scene where lots of animated figures were shown marching towards something. It reminded me of an army of zombies lurching towards me, but I am nit-picking now. A great effort and one that needs to be sustained till the end of the financial year.

I ‘Like’ it

Tata Docomo has always adopted a rather irreverent and whacky tone in its communication. This new TVC by what I guess is their new agency (name not known to me) continues with that tone. Actually I really enjoyed seeing it and that’s saying a lot. The script and its delivery are great. It tells you about this social media queen whose posts would rock the page with likes and comments.

And there she was, pouting desperately and trying to attract attention with every digital trick she knew, but almost half-an-hour after she had changed her profile picture she had not received even one “Like”. The voice-over ends with a plaintive plea to open up, be good and help the poor self-proclaimed social butterfly’s self-esteem by stabbing the ‘Like’ button.

After all, with the robust data plan from Docomo, doing “good” was never so easy. A fresh approach, a real nice tongue-in-cheek script and carefully aimed communication. I’m pressing the Like button.

Ramesh Narayan is a communications consultant. Mail your comments to cat.a.lyst@thehindu.co.in

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