Email
Print
ShareMUMBAI: Life's not fair for Hindustan Lever Limited. When the packaged goods sultan vaunts fair and comely product benefits or shows frames of wannabe air hostesses in its ads for its fairness cream, it gets roundly chastised for being everything from superficial, to racist or just plain Neanderthal in its attitude-value matrix.
In its latest round of ads for brand Ponds, the company's vexed activists again, ironically for taking up hard-line issues like domestic violence in ads.
Pond's India in association with The United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM, which is the women's fund at the United Nations) had launched a print and TV campaign against domestic violence. Launched in November, the campaign was withdrawn by the first week of December.
The goal of advertising was to raise awareness of domestic violence, a closeted scourge across geographies and social cadres.
Industry sources reveal that Ponds creamed back its campaign since a small group of activists started raising Cain against the campaign and threatened to take the matter to court.
They felt that the HLL company had not shown all the aspects of domestic life and instead portrayed a 'one-track' picture, say the sources.
However, this group did not file any official complaint with Advertising Standards Council of India or any other authority and finally the campaign went off the air.
Here's how the print campaign ran: `Every 6 hours an Indian women is physically abused. Join us and support the victims/survivors of domestic violence.
Mail the blue flap on the Pond's Cold Cream pack to P.O. BOx 11311, Mumbai, and we will contribute Rs.2 towards the United Nations Development Fund For Women.' That's classic cause-related marketing.
The print ad carried the picture of a woman with deep wounds on her face. The caption read: `I slipped in the bathroom.' The subhead read: `Stop covering up domestic violence.'
Says Ashok Venkatramani, "The job of the campaign was to spread awareness against domestic violence. We decided when to start the campaign and when to end it. So the campaign ran for the intended period of time. Secondly, the campaign shows the social responsibilities taken up by HLL and we have lived our promise to stand by UNIFEM and donate money to them for all the non-administrative purposes."
The Pond's brand smoothes across talcum powders, cold cream, face wash, body lotion etc and reportedly occupies about 57%of the Rs 325 crore premium skincare market.
The brand has also become a generic tag for winter care creams, thanks to the catchy ad line created by Ogilvy & Mather--` Googly Woogly Woosh" for its cold cream.
This winter season, looks like ardent activists have turned the cosmetic counter on Pond's and done a googly woogly woosh on them....
