The Brief

Wildlife SOS rescues Sloth Bears from the hands of poachers and Kalandars (traditional keepers of dancing bears). They pierce a red hot needle through a bear cubs delicate muzzle and pass a rough rope through it and keep it underfed and shackled to a 2 foot length of rope for all its life. Once the bears are rescued they have to be treated and looked after as they cannot be returned to the wild. Taking the Bears away from Kalandars doesn't solve problems as it's the only livelihood they know, so they just go and poach another bear cub.

Creative Execution

The Product was a stuffed bear toy - The proceeds of the sale would help support Wildlife SOS efforts to stop the illegal practice of torturing Sloth bears and using them as dancing bears to earn money. We set up a stall in a busy Mall and let the bears do the talking. Each toy had a tight noose around its muzzle and the plea, SET ME FREE attached to it. Buyers symbolically removed the chains from the toy's muzzle before taking it home. This promotion gave Kalandars an alternate livelihood, generated awareness and helped raise funds for the organisation.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

The idea was to give Kalandars an alternate means of livelihood. We trained them to make stuffed replicas of their former victims. We then planned an event in an upmarket mall where stuffed bear toys were placed with a noose around their muzzle and a reply back placard with the appeal ‘SET ME FREE’ printed on one side. We drove traffic to the stall by creating an event on social networking sites, viral e-mailers and the mall's bluetooth server informed visitors about the event. Buyers removed the noose from around the bear’s muzzle and physically set it free.

Results

Venue: Select city Walk Mall, Delhi Outcome: The stall has an average daily footfall of 1200 people and 6% conversion rates. Initially 217 bear toys were placed in the stall and they sold out on the first day itself. After that, the store continued to sell other merchandise, and took advance orders from the buyers for the stuffed bears. Stuffed Bear being the main attraction, footfalls increased in the stall and which in turn increased sales of other merchandise from Wildlife SOS. Now the model is getting scaled upto 12 stores across the country by feb,2010.