Observations as simple as reading random stuff scribbled on objects around you can soon elevate into excellent business and marketing idea where you really need not put in excessive efforts to sell your brands; they’d sell for themselves. One such attempt was made by Tata Motors and Rediffusion Y&R to sell a condom brand while promoting safe sex among truck drivers in India years ago.
We’ve all read those quirky lines stylistically painted on trucks and auto-rickshaws in India. From intense shayaris to quotes against ‘buri nazar‘, these atypical sentences have often caught our attention and have even derived subtle cackles from us. Among the many artistic designs, you must’ve read ‘Use Dipper At Night’ boldly splotched on the back of almost every truck.
Now, this message originally is an appeal to use dim headlights at night. Tata Motors, India’s largest truck manufacturer, saw the potential to do a social awareness campaign here and twisted the sentence by releasing a condom brand by the same name as an initiative to promote safe sex among Indian truck drivers.
In their research, they realised that AIDS awareness among drivers was low. Many of them visited sex workers in the night. Tata decided it wanted to penetrate India’s remote locations and reach the drivers ‘in a language they understood best‘.
The packaging of the special range of condoms perfectly captured the essence of the Indian truck art. Tata did not even spend a penny on media to reach the target consumers as around 6 million truck drivers were already motivating each other to practise safe sex with the all-pervasive messaging on the back of their trucks. The condoms were manufactured by HLL Lifecare and distributed by TCI Foundation.
While the campaign met with an award-winning success, many of us on X (including myself) just discovered the dapper initiative by Tata Motors, thanks to Ashish Singh’s tweet.
You can watch the campaign video released by Tata Motors here:
Isn’t it cool? Such an intelligent idea to directly integrate the brand with something that is already a big part of the target audience’s day-to-day life. Besides, the value addition it provided was important. This campaign by Tata is now on the list of my favourite brand campaigns.