DELHI: With the society and media & entertainment industry getting more serious about issues like inclusivity and women rights in their approach, it becomes tactical to harness campaigns that rely on very gendered aspects of one’s nature. There have been several instances of brands stepping on the wrong side to attract great backlash from the consumers. But one brand that doesn’t fail to do it right every time is Imperial Blue with its ‘Men Will Be Men’ spot. Even though it has been subject to a lot of scrutiny when it comes to social movements, the campaign never fails to resonate with the audience with its crisp, tongue-in-cheek, and responsible humour.
This year’s edition, titled ‘Heartbeat’, created by Ogilvy & Mather, received a similar response from the viewers as it went viral across three continents. It had managed to get 20 million impressions on social media in just 5 days of the launch and its popularity is only growing with each passing day.
Talking about the spot to Indiantelevision.com, Pernod Ricard India general manager marketing, Seagram’s whiskies Ishwindar Singh shared that he was surprised to see the level of engagement the campaign got on digital media.
Elaborating on the gendered nature of the ad, Ishwindar admitted that the brief for the particular campaign is any agency’s nightmare. “We want it to be crisp, within 20-seconds, without any dialogues, comic but not slapstick, and there should be no objectification of women,” he said.
Singh added that this year, the aim was to create it from a woman’s perspective. “This year, we have looked at the whole act of ‘men will be men’ from a woman’s eyes. This is a historic campaign, and if you would have looked at it 10-years-ago, the whole story was from men’s perspective. The scenario back then was very different. There was no concept of objectification of women. This time, we have got the female character at the centre-stage.”
He also noted that this inclusivity was not only at the creative level but the team working on the project comprised of a good number of women. Even the creative director from Ogilvy’s team, Ritu Sharda, gave a fine women’s angle to the story.
The campaign was launched with a digital-first strategy and will be launched across TV channels. Speaking about the strategy, Singh said that the brand will be targeting sports and music programmes with the spot.
Talking about the digital-first approach, Singh shared that launching the ad on social channels first helps the brands understand if the campaign will fly on its own or will need media push to travel. He insisted that the constant feedback received on social media helps the marketers gauge the full potential of a campaign.
