‘No more compromises’: Positive messaging provides Kerala’s gender marketing campaign a social edge, triggers conversations

Spreading consciousness isn’t just about what the message is, however how it’s conveyed. And that’s the place Kerala’s Women and Child Development (WCD) division is stealing hearts and stirring conversations by means of its marketing campaign on social media.
Sample this: On Mothers’ Day final week, its Facebook web page featured a poster defining the time period ‘amma’, or mom. Translated from Malayalam, it learn, “Epitome of love. Synonym of patience. Superwoman. Just like others, she’s an ordinary person full of love, grief, anger and fatigue.” It went on so as to add, “Instead of dumping the burden of expectations on her, we can remember that mothers are ordinary human beings too. We can accept them as they are.”

The phrases, aimed toward demolishing ideas of idolising motherhood, provided a contemporary and sharp perspective for a lot of on social media from the standard uninteresting, repetitive campaigns of presidency departments. Predictably, it went viral, shared over 7,500 occasions and garnered almost 10,000 likes. Sandeep Das, a consumer, commented, “…this department is on a different level. A big salute for travelling with the changing times.”
On April 3, the division put out one other poster, this time on the extra delicate matter of abortion. Accompanied by a photograph of a being pregnant stick, the textual content translated from Malayalam learn, “To those who don’t recognise a woman’s right to choose between being a mother or not, make no more compromise.” As against the one on motherhood, the suggestions to this publish was blended. But the Facebook publish nonetheless succeeds in doing what it was got down to do — make its level and stimulate a dialog.

TV Anupama IAS, who heads the WCD division, says, “The society is a bit volatile. The one thing we learnt during the process is that people will accept (the message) if we present it in a way that’s not offensive and yet reveals the truth. We were careful not to hurt anyone individually. But there are certain social norms that have been accepted over the years, but not good for an evolving society.”
“Right from the start, we had decided that this is not going to be a campaign where we simply say ‘so and so is a punishable offence.’ People know that child marriage and dowry are punishable offences, we needn’t repeat it,” she provides.
The IAS officer mentioned the division usually runs campaigns, each on-line and offline, stretching from Nirbhaya Day in December to the International Women’s Day in March. In 2019-20, it organised ‘night walks’ for ladies throughout 100 chosen spots within the state to ship the message of reclaiming public areas. This yr, because of the vagaries of the pandemic, it needed to prohibit its consciousness actions to a digital marketing campaign, which had two main themes: parenting and gender (ladies).
“When it comes to parenting, everyone thinks they are a born parent. But today’s situation is not like that where there are more nuclear family set-ups. We had many eye-opening cases during the pandemic. Sometimes, they have to learn from others how to handle kids. It further manifested during the lockdown when kids didn’t have a lot of activities to engage in. Parents naturally had a bigger role to play in the campaign,” says Anupama.
At the grassroots degree, parenting clinics have been began to provoke a two-way dialog between dad and mom and skilled counsellors. P Premjith, a UNICEF marketing consultant with the state authorities, mentioned many dad and mom got here with a bunch of points reminiscent of behavioural, emotional outbursts, despair, drug and porn habit amongst kids and many others. If a majority of the problems have been resolved on the clinic-level, these past a counsellor’s experience could be referred to psychologists and psychiatrists beneath the Kerala Mental Health Programme, he added.
The success of the parenting marketing campaign gave the division confidence to press forward with the one on gender, the officer mentioned. A core staff was shaped consisting of officers from the division, gender advisors and authorized consultants. An ‘expression of interest’ was floated and an promoting company empanelled by the federal government was chosen for the marketing campaign.
The tagline ‘Ini Venda Vittuveezhcha’ (No extra compromises) was confirmed after in depth consultations.
“The core team identified the topics to be conveyed through the campaign and the agency did an excellent job by converting them into creatives. We would give them the thread and (the agency) would develop it further. We designed it in a way where suggestions can be made by anyone in the department, even cleric-level ministerial staff. Our officers would refine it further and hand it over to the agency,” defined Anupama.
Along with digital posters, the marketing campaign additionally has brief movies and music movies relaying themes unusual on authorities’s social media areas. For instance, there’s a brief movie slamming the patriarchal observe of curbing a working lady’s monetary independence. “Domestic violence is not just assaulting a woman physically and mentally. It is also putting a curb on their financial freedom. In such circumstances, please reach out on the 181 Mitra helpline number,” the publish reads.
“We have been watching the conversations and responses. When we spoke about something that’s not acceptable to some sections of the society, we saw that people were trying to establish the point that we put forth. There are more conversations. We don’t claim we have covered everything, but I think the approach was good and appropriate for this generation,” she provides.