Tata Tea says gender sensitivity should start at home

For ages, women have been battling gender inequality in our society in which men have always been held on a high pedestal. Outside or at home, discrimination is prevalent even today and gender sensitisation is one way to end this unfair practice.

Tata Tea has been raising such issues now and often. In order to take its conversation of ‘Preactivism’ forward along with the issue of women safety, Tata Tea has rolled out its latest TVC as a part of its ‘Jaago Re’ campaign. Through this campaign, the brand aims to talk about the need for gender sensitisation and make us aware about the gender inequality even in our households.

The campaign conceptualised by Mullen Lintas highlights how the society treats girls or women differently from boys. The film aims to highlight the stereotype behaviour we impose on girls since childhood to their adulthood.

The film shows a young girl who seeks permission from her mother to go out and play badminton with her brother. The mother refuses permission and instead asks the girl to help her out in kitchen. The mother, on the other hand, encourages her son to play.

Speaking about the idea behind the campaign, Shriram Iyer National Creative Director, Mullen Lintas, said, “Through this campaign, we wanted to create ‘Preactivism’ in various areas and to bring small behaviour changes. We have tried to come up with various societal issues. This time around we have come up with an issue called gender sensitisation. I believe it should happen at a school level because children should understand that there are certain privileges given to boys and not extended to girls even by parents sometimes. So, we felt that at the school level, we can start creating the sensitisation. For us, Preactivism is because you are going to detect it early and prevent it. As the children become adults, they will tend to get more and more conditioned and will start living these differences between genders.”

Jaago Re hopes to address this issue at the grass-root level by urging people to sign a petition to the HRD Ministry to make gender sensitisation compulsory in schools. The campaign also encourages parents to take a personal pledge to practice and teach gender sensitivity to their children at home.

Talking about this, Iyer stated, “There is a petition that’s going to reach out to the HRD ministry to try and connect with schools and make them aware of this particular issue. It’s important to point out something which is going on and when you watch the film you can understand that this type of situation must be occurring time and again in households.”

All of the issues related to the social cause are like arms of ‘Alarm bajne se pehle, Jaago Re’ campaign. Tata Tea has plans to identify these emerging issues and to find out the solutions to ‘Preactivate’ them so that they don’t go on a larger scale.

Will it be impactful?

On whether the TVC will create an impact, Iyer shared, “Hope so. We are in the communication business and we are hoping to be able to communicate it to a larger audience and shift the way they think about such issues.”

Tata tea, through its advertising, has been focusing on awakening the public regarding such issues. This time around they are planning to have a look around the regular issues. We as a part of this society need to work towards creating a more gender-sensitive environment where both men and women respect and treat each other as equals. And this change needs to start now.

Globally a boiling topic too

Not only in India, but even abroad, gender sensitivity is a boiling topic. Recently in UK, the Advertising Standards Authority banned ‘gender stereotypes’ in ads. The ASA argues that harmful stereotypes can restrict the choices, aspirations and opportunities of children, young people and adults.

Peer reviews

Let’s see what other veterans from the industry have to say about gender sensitivity and Jaago Re’s latest TVC.

KV Sridhar

KV Sridhar, Founder & Chief Creative Officer, Hyper Collective, loved the initiative. He said, “This is a very good campaign and is an essence to what has been happening for the last 30 years in every ad. The stereotyping has been there and people have been fighting for gender sensitivity for the last 10 years. That’s the reason why it has been instituted in Campaign India and we have been doing quite a bit of work in influencing the influencer. Lot of stereotyping happens without people realising. I really appreciate what Tata Tea is doing, this is awakening because tea as a product awakes one in the morning. I think product connect is there in the video. The video is very clearly telling the difference as to what needs to be learnt and it’s a good effort. A lot of brands have been working on such issues and I have been very closely working with gender sensitivity as well.”

Anuja Chauhan

Anuja Chauhan, Creative Consultant, JWT and writer, said, “I think a lot of brands have been doing campaigns around gender sensitivity but Tata Tea has been doing Jaago Re for long, focusing on such issues. The brand is a large middle-class brand and will for sure make an impact. There are various brands which focus on such issues but they are more of a feminist brands. Now gender sensitivity is something which everyone is planning onto.”

The TVC:

Credits:

Creative: Amer Jaleel, Shriram Iyer, Garima Khandelwal, Sangeetha Sampath

Account Management: Kishore Subramanian, Lopamudra Bhattacharya, Anahita Brar

Planning: Ekta Relan, Sushma R Rao

Production House: The Wired Society

Director: Supriya Sarin

Film Department: Satyajit Ganu

Exposure (mediums used): Digital

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