Havells creates #RespectForWomen online

Havells has teamed up with Culture Machine, a company that creates digital video entertainment for the internet generation, to create a bricolage song.

Taking its 'Respect for Women' message online, Havells has launched a video of a bricolage (French for 'tinkering') song featuring Vasudha Sharma from the pop band Aasma, and percussionist Sarthak Mudgal. In its campaign, Havells had categorically positioned its range of domestic appliances as gender-neutral products.

Created by Culture Machine, a firm that offers digital video entertainment for the internet generation, the song was created as something spectacular in order to suit the appetite of the online audience.

The song is similar to a jug band, wherein music is created with the help of everyday utensils used in the kitchen. The idea was to spread awareness that a woman's place is not in the kitchen alone, but wherever she wants to be and she could do whatever she wishes to.

The video features the popular AR Rahman track, Humma Humma from the movie Bombay. Vasudha and Mudgal have created a unique blend of the classic hit and mixed it uniquely with the beats from the appliances, courtesy Havells.

Speaking about the objective of the campaign, Siddharth Narula, president, revenue, Culture Machine says that the campaign aims to change the viewers' attitude towards the women in their lives and register the campaign thought of Respect for Women.

Since the brief from the client was to be innovative and stay closer to "respect for women" theme, Culture machine chose Vasudha Sharma as she is a singer-songwriter, originally from New Delhi and her music is a nice blend of Indian classical and folk music with western contemporary music.

"She loves experimenting with different stuff, is trained in Indian classical and has been doing Live Looping combining both Indian and western influences. She represents the target group perfectly. This makes her a one woman band where she does a bit of beatboxing, few harmonies and makes her own music live and sings her compositions over it. Also, having been a band member of the famous Indian pop band 'Aasma', she has a great fan following and would surely connect with the music video and its concept. Vasudha was extremely excited when the idea was pitched to her and decided to shoot for it right away," states Narula.

Considering the humorous and thought provoking TVCs that Havells is famously known for, the digital promotions also needed an extensive online reach. The target audience for this particular video was young women and men.

The idea, states Narula, was to connect to the youth of India via various social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, popular social media news sites like Scoopwhoop, Thatscoop, Indiatimes and popular online English news dailies IBNLive, DNA, Deccan Chronicle and others. With more than 25,000 views in less than 24 hours of upload, the video has already been well received digitally.