SAMSUNG TECHNICAL SCHOOL – SEEMA NAGAR

Short List
TitleSAMSUNG TECHNICAL SCHOOL – SEEMA NAGAR
BrandSAMSUNG INDIA ELECTRONICS PVT. LTD.
Product / ServiceSAMSUNG
CategoryA03. Online: Fiction
EntrantCHEIL WORLDWIDE Gurgaon, INDIA
Idea Creation CHEIL WORLDWIDE Gurgaon, INDIA
Production GOOD MORNING Mumbai, INDIA

Credits

Name Company Position
Tarvinderjit Singh Cheil Worldwide, India Executive Creative Director
Sagar Mahabaleshwarkar Cheil Worldwide, India Chief Creative Officer
Anupam Mishra Crazy Few Films Director

The Campaign

We told India the true story of Seema Nagar, a student of Samsung Technical School. She too was called BETA by her father. Till she saved the family major embarassment one day. This was done via a digital film, dedicated website and articles in the press. Watching the story of a girl who was like any other, with a family like any family on the street created empathy. And her eventual triumph proved that you don’t need superhuman effort to rid our families of this unfair practice.

Creative Execution

The video was released on YouTube on 29 May 2017. The story was inspired by the life of Seema Nagar. A student of Samsung Technical School. Her father, like so many other Indian parents, used to call her beta, or son. Till one day she used her technical training to prevent a family disaster. And proved how special daughters can be.

– Highest Ever Female Viewership For An Indian Ad – 81M Views 54K Likes 70K Shares - 128K New Followers Added – No 1 Viral Video in the World according to Ad Age – Total Playing Time Online - 257 Years - Kalraj Mishra, Cabinet Minister in the Government of India not just tweeted the film but also felicitated Seema Nagar, the girl who inspired the story - Seema Nagar was also felicitated by the Chief Minister of her state - Prominent Indians like Rajan Anandan, Head of Google India and Jose Cavaco, MTV VJ came out in support - Twitter was flooded by Indians promising to never call their daughter, son

Challenging age-old patriarchy is never welcome. Best to serve it as something more palatable than a sermon. Like entertainment. In cinema-crazy India, entertainment means Bollywood-scale emotional saga, ensemble cast, on-location shooting and Bollywood technicians. Exactly what we offered. The script had the canvas of a Bollywood film spanning as it did over two decades of a family’s life. Acclaimed stage/cinema actors. Music was produced by Wadali Brothers, the world famous numero unos of Sufi music. This was their first and only advertising work. No wonder the film was viewed 81 million times, not as an ad but as a film.

Our message was relevant and necessary for the entire country. Naturally, television or print would have been prohibitively expensive for such a wide reach. Therefore, the only apt medium was the ubiquitous Internet. Deep network reach and the cheapest data rates in the world further strengthened the case for an Internet film. We realized that Indian men might not want to share a video that challenges age-old patriarchal practices. So we decided to target women in the first phase. Genres that they prefer like Bollywood, fashion, lifestyle, and home improvement were used to push the content. And it worked. Women liked and shared the video like never before. We then upped the game and spread the net to include male viewers as well. The momentum of the campaign ensured that men came out in full support as well.

Links

Video URL