For more than 50 years the Vicks brand, part of Procter & Gamble’s Health & Wellbeing segment, is known for offering cough and cold products — ideal for family care. But what exactly describes a family? There’s no denying that the concept of family has changed a lot over the years. To point out what a family really means, the brand, which is India’s “No.1 Cough & Cold Brand,” recently launched a touching campaign demonstrating that an emotional bond between a child and non-traditional parents can be just as strong as with the typical mom and dad.
The #TouchOfCare initiative was developed with the help of advertising agency Publicis Singapore, and can be seen as a major tool that can have a positive impact upon the ways in which a less traditional family is perceived in society today. The new Vicks campaign is based on the true story of a transgender woman who adopts a girl who never met her father and lost her biological mother due to HIV/AIDS.
The campaign is accompanied by a touching video, through which the orphan little girl named Gayatri shares her thoughts on the way she was raised by her adoptive mother Gauri — a transgender woman who, despite all discriminations she had to face in India, managed to raise the adopted child on her own.
For 10 years the adoptive mother stood beside her daughter when she felt sick. Sunday was their favorite day which started with a head massage, a perfect lunch, and ended with a horror movie that made the frightened little girl cuddle in her mom’s arms. Just like with a ‘normal’ mum.
The story conceived for Procter & Gamble ends with the little girl pointing out that her “civics book says that everyone is entitled to basic rights,” asking herself why her mom’s rights are denied. She then promises herself she will not be a doctor, but instead she will choose to become a lawyer, fighting for equal rights for the transgender people in India.
The three-and-a-half-minute-long video directed by Neeraj Ghaywan of drama film Masaan is going viral with more than 3 million views on YouTube since its launch on 29th March. A similar success was recorded by Samsung India as well, with the launch of the #SamsungCares campaign. The video titled “We’ll take care of you, wherever you are” conceptualized for the Korean tech giant succeeded to gather around 38 million views in just 15 days since its release on popular the video platform, currently reaching more than 100 million views.
In India, LGBT people are experiencing social difficulties that other people do not have to face. Hijra, the term used to describe transgender individuals who are born as men, is recognized as the third sex in the Indian Subcontinent.
Although the LGBT community has begun to be more and more accepted worldwide, in India transgender people face a range of abuses regarding human rights, like violence in public and at home, or they face discrimination in health, education, employment, etc. In fact, the Hijra term is used in a derogatory manner and describes people with very low social status who live on the margins of the society.
This is not the first campaign showing the social issues India’s transgender people need to confront every day. In 2016, Y-Films released the first transgender pop music band from India, dubbed The 6 Pack Band, trying to fight against discrimination towards this community.
In collaboration with Indian agency Mindshare Mumbai and Unilever’s tea brand Brooke Bond Red Label, the cover of Pharell Williams’ Happy song, Hum Hain Happy initiative — the first of its kind — managed to win the Cannes Grand Prix Glass Lion award at the Cannes Lions festival.
Credits:
Client: Vicks
Agency: Publicis Singapore
Director: Neeraj Ghaywan