In this election season, many brands have been active in urging citizens to exercise their right to vote. Their right to choose. As an initiative to encourage more and more people to vote, McDonald’s took up a unique activation on Election Day in Hyderabad on 11 April, 2019. They simply took away your right to choose! Since we often kind of take our right to choose for granted, McDonald’s wanted to show how it would feel if someone took that right away. Well, McDonald’s did hopefully help some of their customers realise just that.
So as customers came into the outlet that morning asking for McVeggie burger or a Paneer burger or a Maharaja Mac, the counter staff served them something completely else. Perplexed, customers obviously wanted to know why? Because said the girl-at-the-counter, we have chosen this burger for you. But why would you choose a burger for me that I never ordered, and don’t want? When adamant customers started to insist that they be served what they had paid for and nothing else, the staff simply asked them, “Have you voted?”.
Because if you haven’t voted, you simply lose the right to choose. McDonald’s went on to point out that, ‘280 million Indians gave up their right to choose, in 2014’. To further drive home the point, McDonald’s reminds us, ‘We all want a government of our choice. But we don’t want to go out and choose’. So, ‘This election #MakeYourChoice’. The video ends with lots of customers showing off their ‘inked’ finger and proclaiming, “I’m lovin’ it!”.
As a one-off social initiative, the activation got highly viralised. I received at least a dozen forwards on WhatsApp and Facebook. There were no mass media spends or any spends on digital. The brand just depended on people-power to spread the message. Good stuff!
Luggage-maker Samsonite also joined the list of socially conscious brands wanting you to actively participate in the dance of democracy. The Samsonite campaign for the elections is based on an interesting insight: over 91 per cent of people do not return to their home town to vote. Samsonite decided to change that with the #EkDinKiChutti initiative, encouraging people to take a day off and travel home to vote.
The ad, created by agency Autumn Grey, opens on a young man taking a day’s leave from work to visit his home town. Over the course of this journey home, he relishes the sights and enjoys the sounds of his birthplace, reconnects with old friends and spends time with his loved ones. But these reunions are all incidental as his motive to take the chutti is different: the young man is in town just for a day — to vote. The film ends showing him exercising his vote.
I quite liked the ad. #TravelToVote builds on two interesting insights. One, that polling day is always a holiday. Hence, if you are not too far from where your vote is registered, then that official holiday is a day well spent traveling to vote. Second, that most of us who work away from their hometown actually don’t make the effort to make the trip home to support the cause of democracy. It is not just do-able, but a must-do.
Flipkart too put out a nice ad saying, ‘We may be different, but our vote makes us equal’. ‘Let’s change the way we show our vote on Election Day 2019’ because that is one day that is #EqualsDay.I think it is a healthy trend for brands to be socially conscious, and actually put out communication that is well thought through and well presented. If such communication can move the needle on citizens’ apathy, indifference, inertia and cynicism, then I would consider it money well spent. The only niggling doubt at the back of my mind always is on the honesty of purpose of such advertising: is it really communication from the bottom of the heart or is it advertising focused on ad awards? One can never be sure. (The writer is an advertising and media veteran)