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Brand messaging decked up as a public service campaign always runs the danger of backfiring. It can even tar public opinion on a message for those flouting safety rules. Incorrigible daily commuters at the Sion railway station in Mumbai were recently distracted with tracks painted yellow. While they gave the foot-over-bridge a miss to cross the tracks, they came across names, written on them, of people who had supposedly died when crossing.
The exercise, with fictitious names, was done by Birla Sun Life Insurance to raise awareness about the perils of crossing unmanned railway tracks. But it misfired with public opinion labelling it as insensitive in attempting to capitalise on such unfortunate deaths. The lettering has since been scrubbed off.
Ajay Kakar, chief marketing officer (financial services), Aditya Birla Group says, "The initiative was a mock-up for a public awareness campaign on the dangers of crossing railway tracks. It was done for a few days on the tracks near the Sion station as a trial. It is now upto the Railways to implement it."
However, railway officials say they were not aware that the initiative by Birla Sun Life was a marketing campaign where the company's logo would be used. V Malegaonkar, chief public relations officer of the Central Railways says, "We had thought that it was a social campaign on the perils of trespassing on the railway tracks. Now, we have removed the signs."
Yet, when securing permissions, Birla Sun Life had mentioned in a letter to the railway authorities that there would be branding with the use of a logo. The letter said: "A supervisory team from JWT and a support team from Raythones Inc (Birla Sun Life's ad agencies), will be pasting a cautionary message on the tracks, with the Birla Sun Life Insurance logo, along with indicative names of people who have been victims of such incidents. These names are not real names of victims but indicative of possible people who could have lost their lives". When reviewed by Business Standard, it even had a note from the railway officials, permitting work on the campaign, in the last week of March, 2013.
The negative buzz only goes on to show that such permissions don't insure an unhindered run of a campaign.
However, Kakar is candid and says, "We sell insurance and our job as insurance players is to safe-guard people against calamities such as death." So, this is not the first time Birla Sun Life has attempted to jar people out of their complacence by way of branded public awareness messages. Last year, the company had created mock-ups of coffins that were placed in the gaps in walls adjoining railway platforms in Mumbai. "People have a tendency to squeeze through these gaps to reach or leave the platforms, rather than take the overhead bridge. Our objective was to sensitise people to the hazards of doing this," says Kakar.
Birla Sun Life had also received mixed reviews for casting an ailing Yuvraj Singh in its national TV campaign on buying insurance to protect oneself from the uncertainties in life. The TVC, which appeared in January 2012, coincided with the news of Singh's cancer diagnosis. Shot in an an empty stadium, Singh reminisces about the highs in his career that were punctuated with challenges like injuries that kept him off the team. He then utters the refrain, "...jab tak balla chale ga thhaat hai, nahi chalega to...".
Kakar says, "Our aim in our campaigns, as with the one with Yuvraj Singh, is to sensitise people to the need to protect themselves from death. If in the process it generates a certain kind of reaction, I guess it is something we have to take in our stride. We are neither looking to sensationalise nor capitalise on someone else's suffering."
While Kakar attempts to come clean on the issue, brand experts point to the dangers of indulging in what they describe as shock marketing. It may generate conversations in the media clutter, but it could also get rapped on the knuckles for trivialising an issue, according to them.
Birla Sun Life is not the first company to have borne the brunt of this. The Italian apparel brand Benetton, for instance, has used numerous "shocking" visuals in their print and outdoor ads to advocate gender and racial equality or the need to accept people as they are. Its Unhate campaign in 2011 was one of the most controversial, where the Pope Benedict XVI was shown kissing a senior Muslim cleric from Egypt. The Vatican, promply said that it would drag Benetton to court for the ad, which Benetton pulled off rightaway. But not before stating that its intention was a noble one. How far can a brand go when attaching itself to a cause?
