The Campaign

Since lack of education for girls was not provoking enough action from our target group, we decided to show them the larger social evil that takes place when girls drop out of school. In fact, we took this social evil right into their homes. In the form a Wedding Invitation. That of a 12-year-old girl with a 40-year-old man. The invite went on to ask them to save the to-be child bride and millions of others like her by sending them to school. Shocked as they were, it got them reading. And soon enough moved them to donate too.

Creative Execution

The invite was designed exactly like a traditional Indian Wedding Card - with all the ostentatiousness that would mark a wedding of stature. We chose motifs and a colour palette that would be familiar to any Indian receiver and make them immediately eager to open it. The first side invited readers to the wedding of Neelam (a 12-year-old girl) to Kishor (a 42-year-old man) in a matter-of-fact way - as if everything was normal in the world. This shocking part was what got our audience to read further and discover the disturbing results of lack of education. The Invites were sent to over 5000 homes in the country over a span of 3 months.

Results

Project Nanhi Kali saw a 40% increase in donations during the activity period - the highest increase they have ever seen in such a short period.

The work being entered is a Direct Mailer from Project Nanhi Kali - an NGO for Girl Child Education - seeking donations from receivers. The work went to a specific set of 5000 potential donors and had a clear call-to-action asking them to donate. However, this was done in a thought-provoking way by designing the mailer like a Wedding Invite - that of a 12-year-old girl with a 40-year-old man.

Our target audience was India's affluent urbanites. People who live with plenty and know no bounds to their aspirations, among which it is easy to forget the disturbing reality that most of the country deals with. Charities have earned a bad reputation in their eyes due to lack of transparency and innumerable cases of fraud. And advertising in its traditional form stopped working on them a long time ago. Client data showed that only 0.5% of mailers sent generated action. Which is why we chose to design our direct mailer in a way that would never go unnoticed in an Indian household. Wedding Invitation cards are considered very auspicious in India and any receiver would definitely open one. We used this form factor to our advantage and delivered our message effectively with clear call-to-action for donations.