Ripples on the brain

Remember Population Services International’s popular advertisement campaign against AIDS in TamilNadu a couple of years ago? “Pulli Raajavukku AIDS varuma?” (Will Pulli raaja, a hypothetical character, contract AIDS?).

I vividly remember details about this ad which was aired in the state in 2003-2004. In fact, I heard people talking about this ad first and then watched them in the TV and later in the billboards around the city. This was a buzz ad campaign that was launched to create awareness about the use of condoms to prevent AIDS. It was so popular that it formed the topic of casual discussions in many offices in the city. In the place where I used to work, people, including girls, talked about it during work, in the elevators and at lunch. “Who is this Pulli Raaja?” was the question in everybody’s mind.

As in most buzz campaigns, the mascot was given a definite shape after a few weeks. He was shown as a person who indulges in casual sex under different circumstances - with known or unknown women, commercial or otherwise. The campaign was aimed at men with a motive to create a doubt in their minds about their safety.

The major problem faced by PSI and other organizations in TN was that there are no concentrated red-light areas (unlike, say, Mumbai) and so the campaign could not be targetted. In my opinion, a first for this campaign was that it did away with any conservatism its previous ads had. The previous captions used to be “When you have a wife and family at home, why do you seek pleasure outside?” or something similar, where they concentrated on discouraging men from having sex with anybody else other than their wife. This ad just wanted the men to use condoms to be safe and predictably, there was some opposition to the message this ad was conveying.

Nevertheless, the campaign was hugely successful in TN. A study commissioned found that the spontaneous recall for this ad was 32% and a whooping 59% discussed about this ad with others. The percentage of interviewees using condoms increased from 58% before the campaign to 65% after the campaign. [Source - The Hindu]

The success of this campaign led to buzz advertising in other product categories as well - Arogya milk for example (“Arjun amma yaaru”, “Who’s Arjun’s mother?”) - but I guess its success can never be replicated.