MUMBAI: Saffolalife, a not-for-profit initiative by Marico Ltd, has always championed the cause of heart health with a vision to create a ‘Heart Healthy India’. This World Heart Day, Saffolalife has launched yet another impactful campaign, which aims to drive awareness on lifestyle behaviours and habits that are often ignored but can have a significant impact on one’s heart health. Understanding the impact of these underlying habits is essential to better heart health awareness and care. Lack of sleep, stress, sedentary lifestyle, skipping meals, and ignoring belly fat are key lifestyle habits that show up in those at heart risk.
An online tool, ‘Heart Ka Exam’ has been launched to help people understand how their lifestyle choices could be impacting their heart health and learn simple interventions to espouse a healthier lifestyle.
While India is becoming more health conscious, heart health awareness is still not as prevalent. The common perception is that heart risks arise due to cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes etc. However, their underlying causes are regular behaviours that typify one’s lifestyle such as lack of sufficient sleep, unhealthy eating, stress, sedentary lifestyle, increasing waistlines, amongst others which can easily be controlled. Therefore, through this campaign, Saffolalife aims to help people realize that these smaller lifestyle behaviours, which are ignored on a daily basis, can have a huge impact on their heart health.
Commenting on the campaign, Marico Ltd chief marketing officer Koshy George said, “Committed to creating a Heart Healthy India, Saffolalife has undertaken various initiatives to encourage people to adopt a proactive healthy lifestyle. This year, on World Heart Day, the Saffolalife campaign aims to build awareness around small things that impact the heart. It also inspires people to first understand the risk to their heart health through the online ‘Heart Ka Exam tool and consequently take simple steps for a healthier lifestyle.”
Conceptualised by Mullen Lintas, the campaign kick-starts with a set of two digital films which portray very common lifestyle facets and depict them in a simple yet alerting manner. The first film drives home the point that sleeping for less than 7 hours every night will not only cause dark circles but more importantly, can lead to heart risks. The second film builds awareness around the impact of belly fat on heart health, highlighting how increasing waistlines are indicative of poor heart health.
On World Heart Day, Saffolalife has also released a study in association with Nielsen, which says that 64 per cent Indians in top cities who exhibit one or more of these behaviours - stress, lack of sleep, sedentary lifestyle, skipping meals and belly fat - are at heart risk.
Mullen Lowe creative heads for the campaign Azazul Haque and Garima Khandelwal said, “Our objective for this year's World Heart Day campaign by Saffolalife was to build awareness about the relationship of small, often ignored lifestyle habits with our heart health. Therefore the idea of creating a Heart Ka Exam was born which is symbolic of a report card for your heart's condition. On World Heart Day we are nudging people to take this exam and learn by heart the effect of these small habits like sleeping inadequately or having belly fat on their heart health.”
