The coronavirus outbreak has forced most brands and marketers to alter their communications. Brands have started weaving in awareness about the situation in their messages. Television broadcasters have also started initiating conversations around the situation through unique campaigns. While some ask people to stay clean, others educate them around the importance of staying at home.
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Zee encourages people to wash hands
Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. (ZEEL) released a unique campaign, addressing the issue with its #BreakTheCoronaOutbreak initiative. Zee has decided to ‘pause’ content across its channels with a 30-second break throughout the day to remind people to wash their hands. In a creative manner, the ‘pause’ will encourage viewers to use the break to wash their hands.
Prathyusha Agarwal, Chief Consumer Officer, Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. (ZEEL), said, “As a responsible national television network that entertains 588 million individuals every week, it is our duty to educate and encourage every citizen to adopt and practise healthy habits to fight this pandemic. While several brands are driving awareness around good hygiene, we believe this initiative to pause content and remind our audience to wash their hands will actually drive behaviour. Pausing our content when the audience is most engaged will act as an in-home trigger to wash hands and contribute towards combating the spread of the outbreak.”
The campaign has been conceptualised by Lowe Lintas. Talking about the campaign, Sagar Kapoor, CCO, Lowe Lintas, said, “Having worked on health and hygiene brands for years, my learning is no matter how much we remind people to wash hands, there will always be laggards. Its importance is at a peak in today’s situation. Hence, a straightforward reminder to wash hands with soap.”
According to the broadcaster, the campaign has been rolled out across 40 + channels of Zee network and is expected to reach approximately 588 million individuals across the country every week.
Zee Business calls for closure of Indian market
Anil Singhvi, Managing Editor, Zee Business, has urged authorities to close the Indian market to support share market employees. He said in this volatile share market, a smart stock market investor needs to safeguard both his life and wealth.
"Work from home is possible for various organisations (both government and private) but for the stock market, it's impossible,” he said. He said there is no technique available where the stock market can be run by asking its employees to work from home.
Zee Business also initiated a social media campaign #BandKaroBazaa and carried a poll to know people’s opinion.
The campaign has been applauded by market experts like Basant Maheshwari, Ajay Bagga, VK Sharma, HDFC Securities and Sanjeev Bhasin, IIFL Securities.
#ZBizPoll | क्या कोरोना संकट के चलते बाजार बंद होना चाहिए?#BandKaroBazaar पर ट्वीट कर दें अपनी राय#NSE #BSE #Sensex #Nifty #CoronaVirus @AnilSinghvi_
— Zee Business (@ZeeBusiness) March 18, 2020
Cartoon Network urges children to 'be cool and be clean'
Cartoon Network India has released a video for its young viewers, urging them to maintain hygiene. The video features popular and iconic characters of the channel like the Powerpuff Girls, Ben 10 and We Bare Bears. Abhishek Dutta, Senior Director and Network Head of Cartoon Network and Pogo in South Asia, said they wanted to make the young viewers mindful about adopting healthy habits.
"Cartoon Network and Pogo have always been known for responsible content and our campaigns reflect it in equal measure. Amid the global coronavirus contagion, we want to make our young viewers mindful in adopting some basic health and hygiene practises at home and in their surroundings. To convey this, we created an engaging animated rap video, wherein kids’ favourite toons share easy-to-follow hygiene tips, available in both, Hindi and English for our fans in India," he said.
To reach a maximum number of viewers, the video is on-air on Cartoon Network and available on the channel’s social pages and YouTube.
9XM's Bade-Chote urges people to wash their hands
Music channel 9XM used their iconic characters 'Bade-Chote' to spread awareness about the importance of washing their hands through a song. The channel has also brought changes in their 'Newsic' segment and made the animated hosts Bade-Chote work from home, said Clyde D’Souza, Head of Programming 9XM and 9XO.
“Bade-Chote are our two iconic characters. We decided we should do something around the situation. We also wanted to make it youth-friendly, the best way to do it is by using music and humour. Therefore we came up with ‘Let’s roko corona’,” he said.
“We also have another property called ‘Newsic’ which is our daily news show; we have changed that to ‘Newsic work from home’. The character hosts Bade-Chote are also working from home. We have changed the set and every day they are going to give you tips on how to survive work from home. They will give you movie suggestions, cooking tips and cleaning tips. The ‘Time Check’ reminds people to wash their hands,” he added.
Alt Balaji encourages people to stay at home by offering entertainment
OTT platform Alt Balaji has taken a quirky route through their #StayALT campaign. The platform has encouraged people to stay at home and had offered a variety of content to seek entertainment at a time when they can’t venture out.
The platform has uploaded quirky posts on their social media handles, telling people to watch their content at home. Divya Dixit, SVP, Marketing, Analytics and Direct Revenue at ALTBalaji, said, “We appreciate the effort and awareness people all around are showing towards combating the situation. The current times are difficult, and we seek to raise awareness for the safety of our audience and hence we initiated this community service brand campaign. This is our unique way of encouraging people to stay safely at home, #StayALT and be a responsible member of society in dire times.”