.jpg)
“Do bhai kumbh mele me kho gaye” is a phrase used in the plot of many lost and found Hindi films; however, the official stats of the number of people lost during this festival are alarming. According to the administration, handling all the logistics, anywhere between 400-500 cases of missing people get reported daily during the Kumbh Mela in the dense crowd.
Searching for a loved one amid the sea of humanity and navigating through the congregation creates anxiety for the family as well as the missing person. The purpose of visiting the city for a pilgrimage and a holy dip becomes secondary with the focus on finding loved ones. To combat this problem, which occurs during every Kumbh Mela, every organisation, from the administration to brands to NGOs, grapple for a solution.
Over the years, Pidilite and its legacy brand Fevicol have looked to make a meaningful contribution and created a relationship to signify, “Fevicol ka jod, tootega nahi." For example, in 2016 Fevicol came up with an oversized yellow T-shirt which could fit two or three people together for their campaign ‘Hum Jude Rahaege.”
Cultural Insights + Technology
This year, the brand took the spirit of bonding, one level higher, by using technology to up the game. Speaking on the genesis of their recent Kumbh Mela activation, Sandeep Tanwani, Chief Marketing Officer, Pidilite Industries says, “When we started work on the campaign, we were clear we had to create a solution, that makes Kumbh Mela a memorable experience for all the visitors attending the festival. The three things that we were very conscious of are - first, the communication has to be rooted in a very strong cultural insight. Second. it has to make a meaningful contribution to the problem that we pick to solve. And thirdly, it has to be win-win for the stakeholders involved.”
Kaala Teeka
The activation idea was simple, Fevicol set up its activation center and stalls at all entry points to the Kumbh Mela. Any family with kids were guided towards the activation centers. Pidilite leveraged on the ancient Indian practice of Kaala Teeka – a black mark is made on the infants/small children forehead or the back of the ear to ward off evil spirits. Taking this insight forward, parents were encouraged to apply the Kaala Teeka - a QR code - on their children, with all the parents’ details collected.
Tanwani says, “When you tell them that this is a new type of Kaala Teeka, with a QR code, which you can apply on the child, it becomes relatable to the parent. The heavy adoption of UPI has also resulted in people having a comfort level with the QR code and knowing how to scan it, and are not intimidated by this technology. Therefore, it was just a matter of marrying the technology with the cultural insight. UPI has completely democratised QR codes, and that part of education was not challenging at all.” He continues, “Parents were happy to share their details and register for the Kaala Teeka as they knew that this was a simple mechanism to find a child if he/she goes missing. All a person has to do is scan the code, and the parents’ details are shown, which helps to reunite the family quickly. This is a uniquely Fevicol way of doing things.”
Right at the initial stages, Pidilite along with their partner, Ogilvy, had several rounds of discussion with the authorities to explain the concept. Once the administration was convinced, it was a smooth affair with the required infrastructure set in place. This required a huge amount of groundwork to set up the required infrastructure.
The execution
On-ground the team focused on three important areas - at the entry, many agents were deputed to led the parents to the booth and educate them, next was a team at the booth to capture the parents’ details, and finally, there was a big back-end team taking care of the technology aspect. Tanwani says, “A large part of the communication was about showing parents how to do it and reassure them that once the details are entered, anyone scanning the QR code will get all the parent’s information, such as name of the parent, phone number, the place from where they belong, etc. Parents were also shown how the details look when scanned, and because of this information, the immediacy of reunion is possible.”
Typically, during Kumbh Mela, if someone is lost, it can take from a few hours to a day, to as long as a week for families to be reunited, causing immense anxiety and stress both for the kid as well as for the parents. Tanwani shares, “Every minute is full of anxiety because you don't know where the child is and under what conditions. This is a big concern and here is a solution which can actually provide you a very quick reunion in case the unfortunate incident happens. To prevent this from happening, more than 5,000 parents agreed to put the QR code on their kids.”
Tanwani recounts a scene where a child who was lost was reunited with the family within 30 minutes, and the parents came back to the Pidilite team at the booth to thank them for the solution. He adds, “The only metric, that I told my team, was that even if you were to make a difference to one family, this will all be worth it. We were glad thousands of people came and they saw value in our Kaala Teeka initiative, and therefore we were able to make a meaningful contribution.”
Back to your roots
Commenting on what were the insights the company garnered at the festival attended by 660 million people, as per estimates, Tanwani says, “Overall, a bid trend I found from consumer interactions at Kumbh Mela is the overwhelming feeling of being connected back to their roots, the cultural significance being present at such an auspicious occasion. There was so much of faith at play, and the need to connect back to the cultural roots was a big revelation for me.”
On using this technology in the future, he comments, “The idea has many possible applications, and it is such a simple and low-cost idea. It is possible to scale it in any event where a large human congregation and we intend to use it going forward. This campaign reinforces the fact that whenever you marry cultural insight and then find technical tools to scale up, magic gets unlocked. If you have a deep, rooted cultural insight, and then technology comes, it helps you scale it up at unprecedented levels, with the power of the idea getting magnified. This was a big learning and reinforced that insight is the bedrock and technology is the enabler.” He signs off saying: “The Kumbh Mela is so unique to India, and so is Fevicol, and we continue to be inspired by the culture of India to do something which is uniquely Indian.”
.jpg)
