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Following the popular 'What kind of man are you?' campaign released last year, human rights organisation Breakthrough is back with another piece of work, this one conceived by O&M. This ad highlights the anguish of a woman affected by HIV/AIDS who is thrown out of her house after her husband passes away
HIV/AIDS can perhaps never be communicated enough in India. Be it the Balbir Pasha campaign (which addressed denial amongst men) or the ads supported by Heroes Project (which are more educational and in the nature of a call to action), there's always a relevant message waiting to be delivered.
Last year, the human rights organization, Breakthrough, released a campaign targeting men ('What kind of man are you?'), which tried to make men reflect on how unprotected sex could ruin not just their own lives but also those of their families. Breakthrough is back this year with another issue that is often swept under the carpet: the plight of the virus-affected woman after her husband has passed away due to AIDS.
The old woman with her daughter-in-law, in an auto rickshaw. |
The driver looks lewdly at the younger woman. |
The older lady demands that the rickshaw be halted. |
She then slaps her daughter in law for no fault of hers. |
The voice-over concludes that if you think this is injustice, think of those HIV-infected women who… |
...are thrown out of their houses once their husband passes away. The ad ends on the Breakthrough logo. |
While the execution of the earlier campaign had men as its focal point, this one is centered on women. "That's because when we started out with the briefing process, we had a huge statistic staring at us," states Upputuru. And that alarming truth was this: 90 per cent of HIV-positive women are thrown out of their homes after the deaths of their husbands, who probably infected them in the first place. This is because the wife is expected to bear the burden of taking care of her husband, but once that duty is over, the family and society see no further use for her; they see just a disease-ridden body. "We had to highlight this insensitivity, this injustice in our communication," Upputuru says. The campaign therefore, centers around situations where the woman of the house is punished (the rendition being a slap) for mistakes she didn't commit.
The television campaign comprises three ads. The first shows a woman traveling with her daughter-in-law in an auto rickshaw. The driver of the vehicle keeps looking lewdly at the unsuspecting younger woman. When the mother-in-law notices it, she asks the driver to stop, steps out of the rickshaw and slaps her daughter-in-law, an action that would more appropriately have targeted the rickshaw driver. The voice-over concludes that if one feels this is injustice, then just think of all those HIV-positive women who, for no fault of theirs, are thrown out of their homes once their husband passes away.
The second ad has a wife being slapped by her husband for a road accident that he committed, while the third ad has a woman being slapped by her father, even though it's her brother who comes home at an ungodly hour. Press, radio and outdoor ads have a woman apologising for other people's faults, with a similar explanation in place.
The campaign targets lower rung families and those in rural areas in the states of Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka.
The TVCs are currently airing on Doordarshan, STAR Network (which the huge UP belt tunes to), Sony, ETV (Hindi, Kannada and Marathi) and NDTV, while radio ads will air on AIR and Radio Mirchi. Press ads will figure in 'Dainik Jagran', 'Lokmat', 'Prajavani', 'Udyavani', 'Vijay Karnataka' and 'Vijay Times'. The outdoor hoardings will feature in Kanpur, Lucknow, Dehradun and Saharanpur (all in UP), Aurangabad (Maharashtra) and Udipi (Karnataka). The target is to reach 34 million people in these three states.
The campaign will run for the next two months or so.
© 2007 agencyfaqs!