Has Dairy Day joined the causevertising bandwagon with its new ad?

The ice cream brand, which is famous down South, talks about mute and deaf people, using kids as the key characters.

Looking to increase their profits while spreading awareness about a cause, is a trick that brands use shrewdly. Do it right, and their value soars; do it wrong, and they get trolled.

But, brands are ready to take risks that come with such ads as the windfall is big. And, that’s why, in the recent past, we’ve seen many of these ads.

Dairy Day, the ice cream brand, is the latest entrant in the causevertising space. Titled ‘Let Goodness Speak’, Dairy Day’s three-minute-long ad talks about how a small deed can bridge the distance among people, and lead to happiness, too.

The ad’s about two school-going boys. One of the boys, Jai, is quite pleased to see another kid of his age move in the neighbourhood. As the new kid and his mother climb up the stairs, the two come across an eager Jai, who introduces himself, but is left confused when the other kid doesn’t reply and makes hand gestures, instead. Jai doesn’t understand it.

Jai does understand it, later at dinner, when his mother explains that some people speak with their hands, instead of their mouth. She then shows him a sign language video. Jai decides to learn sign language so that he can make a new friend.

We then see a series of shots where Jai’s doing his best to learn sign language. From learning the letters of the alphabet to asking if you want an ice cream, it’s only when he becomes confident that he approaches the new neighbour.

Jai introduces himself through sign language and it is only then we learn that the other kid’s name is Gatso. It’s the start of a new friendship, a long-lasting one, too, it seems.

As the final shot shows the two new friends eating ice cream together, there’s a message that around 18 million people in India can’t speak or hear and (so) let’s bridge the divide.

In the ad, we saw two woke points. One being about the lives of mute and deaf people, and how acts of goodness can make their lives easier. The other being the two actors who played Gatso and his mother, who seem to be from the North-east - an uncommon choice, but one that’s slowly, yet rightly, becoming common. Also, the decision to use kids as protagonists, when the makers could have used any pair, really.

On the choice of kids as protagonists, Raj Kamble, founder and CCO, Famous Innovations, the makers of the ad, says, “Kids represent goodness in the most innocent way. They go out of their way to help each other effortlessly. Our true target audience is parents, not children. But, as it happens often in real life, these kids represent an ideal that all of us could learn from.”

Kamble says that when the brand approached them, it wanted their belief of ‘goodness’ to reflect in the ads.

He continues, “The story stemmed from a single line statement - we often say that they can’t speak. But the truth is that they say a lot. We just can’t understand them because we don’t speak their language.”

“Today, I’m seeing foreign languages become so popular in schools. Parents want their children to learn French, Mandarin, and so on. I’ve always wondered - why the stress on these languages, which they will probably never use in their lives, why not sign language? If this film inspires even one person to teach their kid sign language, we would be very proud,” added Kamble.

MN Jaganath, co-founder, Dairy Day, says that in each ad, it has used children as the key characters, while adults remained in the background. Also, the brand preferred a narrative style that was light in touch and, hence, kept dialogues and conversations to a minimum.

This is the first of three ads from Dairy Day.