The Campaign

Our campaign arose from the insight that ‘people only pay attention to something if it comes from one of their own’. With the Hero #RideSafe campaign we wanted to attack the conscience of the reckless rider, and also generate curiosity. Being a household name in the country, Hero took up the opportunity to do a road safety campaign hoping to cause a positive behavioral change in the youth of our nation. It’s a saying in India that most would be familiar with, that if you act reckless in your human life, you would become an animal/insect in your next one. Though not the slightest bit degrading to be an animal, it is still fanciful to be getting Riding Lessons from the Living Dead who were once the ‘rugged, rash & handsome’ thrill-chasing bikers just like our TG. Taking a humorous yet subtle route and highlighting the journey

Creative Execution

The human profiles of the characters were taken over by their afterlife characters, & had the insects/animals talk about how they ghost of their biking past still plagues their days. The issue at hand, though serious, is given a humorous twist in the four videos these creatures share across their profiles. TooToofani ends up becoming a fly while living life on edge, gets a ticket to fly straight up. Bechain365, the universally known impatient man ends up with the fate of becoming a snail. The uber cool drunken driver, Night Crawler, ends up ghosting his way through empty alcohol bottles as a cockroach. And, RacyIsMyName, the typical rule breaker ends up becoming a pig running away from butchers to save even his afterlife! A pig, snail, cockroach and a fly talking about their previous life was a fresh way to use video content for CSR purposes.

To break through the clutter. That was our challenge, to be able to stand out in the plethora of CSR initiatives. We exceeded our expectations and reached over 61 million people via this campaign. Not only did we garner 90 million impressions across platforms, the micro videos got 20 million views and 20 million engagements! The campaign organically trended each day it was live and after its success on digital, it also took to mass media because of its virality. This route helped position Hero as a brand that was capable of doing the ‘usual’ in a way their audience weren’t accustomed to, hence effectively changing the way people think about road safety.

The communication goal was to persuade riders to willingly adopt measures of riding safely. Strategy was simple; identify 4 stereotypical biker personalities and have them engage with users on Social Media via their profiles that we created. The profiles showcased the behavioral characteristics of each of these personalities, and how their recklessness landed them the fate of becoming insects/animals in their afterlife. The intent was to communicate to users/TG in a lighthearted tone the seriousness of the issue at hand. Twitter remained the hero for this campaign due to its conversational nature, we used the platform to establish the biker personalities and interact with the target audience. The micro-videos of the bikers in their afterlife were even promoted on Facebook to reach a wider audience.