My best campaign is Reebok's #BruisesCanBeGood: Isobar's Anish Varghese

Mindful of the fact that every brand is talking about women's empowerment, the first brief that we gave ourselves was that we need to ensure that our message stands out, says Anish Varghese

Which do you consider your best campaign and why?

#BruisesCanBeGood, which we created under the Reebok #FitToFight umbrella thought, is one of my all-time favourite work. We executed this campaign for Reebok on Women’s day in 2018.

What was the brief from client?

The client wanted to do a campaign around women’s empowerment/safety. There was also an ‘ask’ — to come up with an idea to get petition signatures to make self-defence education mandatory in schools and colleges for women. Mindful of the fact that every brand is talking about women’s empowerment, the first brief that we gave ourselves was that we need to ensure that our message stands out — it stops people and forces them to take notice. Thereafter, this became our clear check-box. The other important thing was to stand true to the Reebok brand ethos  — fitness, women, and fit to fight. The third was to create a campaign that’s derived from an Indian insight, and not a global one.

What did the campaign achieve for the brand?

The campaign ran on social platforms and we achieved decent numbers. The catch here was to get maximum petition signatures to make self-defence mandatory in schools and colleges. The campaign reached 12.2 million people, and petition signatures to make self-defence education mandatory for female students touched 58,000 — way above our target of 10,000. In addition, we received various international awards as well, in which Clio is huge. On top of it, ET-Brand Equity selected #BruisesCanBeGood as one of the top 10 ads in 2018.

A still from the Reebok ad campaign

Did you conduct any research that helped you come up with the idea?

In India, 39 crimes against women are reported every hour — clearly stating the shocking reality of women’s safety — or the lack of it — in India. We asked ourselves what comes under domestic violence? What leads to domestic violence? The team realised that there is something common between a woman suffering from domestic violence and a woman who knows self-defence — bruises. This relation made us realise that instead of indicating weakness and injustice, bruises can be a mark of a woman’s fighter spirit too.

Digging deeper into the idea of ‘bruises’ we understood how Indians see bruises on a woman. Without any prior story, every person is bound to see bruises on a woman in a negative light. This is when we decided to tell the story of “good bruises” — the concept was a perfect fit with the brand’s aim of spreading awareness about self-defence.

What were the execution challenges?

Getting the mix of people who can be part of the experiment was challenging. We were looking for multiple age groups, profiles and other criteria. A lot of them were working/studying, so the shoot happened after 7.00 pm to manage everyone’s timelines.

Given a chance, is there anything that you would like to change about the campaign?

Building the “realisation moment” was a key objective as we had a very strong Indian insight to articulate. To put forward such a strong and unconventional thought, we needed to show people the real picture. A scripted version of something will not do justice to the idea. The need was to showcase an honest picture of our society by involving real people and highlighting the prevalent mindset. A real solution can only come when people realise by themselves and accept the truth, no matter how harsh it is. And that’s when we decided to get real bruises, real fighters, real women and real people together in a social experiment to tell the story.

What’s your fondest memory about the project?

When we juggled with the names of directors who can picturise the experiment, most of the names that popped up were that of male directors. On deeper thought we decided to go for a female director as she would be able to capture a lot of micro moments and facts that we needed to highlight. 
 

So we finalised Nisrin Aziz to film those moments.