The Campaign

The idea was to turn apathy of people towards the plight of farmers into empathy. So we decided to deliver the message with such an emotional potency that the people start seeing helping farmers as their own responsibility. The centerpiece of the campaign was a film about a farmer’s daughter living in constant fear of losing her father. Her fear stemmed from the numerous farmer suicides that have been happening in India due to financial crisis caused by unforeseen weather fluctuations damaging the agricultural produce. This story reflected the grim reality of the rural India to the urban audience. Released with the hashtag #HelpTheFarmer as a rallying cry, the film invoked the power of collective social responsibility by asking every Indian to take on the mantle to #HelpTheFarmer.

Creative Execution

The film was simultaneously shared on Skymet Weather’s You Tube page, Facebook page and Twitter handle. To make the film popular without having heavy media spends, we began sharing the film with friends, family and acquaintances. Also, multiple PR articles were released around the initiative. A 1-day twitter influencer campaign was executed, and soon #HelpTheFarmer started trending nationally. We kept pushing the film by reposting and re-tweeting the film and the conversations. This is a case study, where the work worked itself, and it didn’t take long for the conversations to build organically.

Within a day, the film generated high-decibel conversations and triggered a deluge of emotional tweets and comments: $174,738 worth of PR/40 Million+ free earned impression/291% increase in website’s unique visits / 11 Million+ views / No. 1 trending topic on Twitter in India / Trended on Twitter nationally for almost 7 hours / Covered by 50+ online and offline national dailies and publishers / Skymet Weather got 2nd place in Website of the Year Weather & Traffic category. In India, there are 22 officially recognised languages. Even though the film was made in Hindi language, the campaign #HelpTheFarmer crossed the barriers of language and dialect as it got covered by the vernacular media and supported by the multi-lingual Twitterati. Some of the netizens even tagged the Prime Minister of India! Even celebrities supported the cause through donations, special initiatives and shared this film at various platforms including popular TV shows.

The film was targeted to reach each & every net savvy, concerned Indian, with the final beneficiary being the agri-dependent population. While a large chunk of this agri-dependent population residing in rural areas might not have direct or easy access to technology, most of them have their friends/relatives employed in urban areas, who either have direct access to the internet themselves, or are in turn connected to those who are net savvy. So, it was quite expected that the message would reach them. That’s why; we chose the 3 most popular online platforms in India – You Tube, Facebook, Twitter, which even the not-so-net savvy user access.