Green rides, a mission anthem, environmental sci-fi thrillers on popular OTT platforms, short films, a pollution check-up camp, diverse contests held at various locations, and a multitude of awareness events are integral components of GAIL (India) Ltd’s ambitious seven-year initiative, ‘Hawa Badlo’. The Maharatna public sector firm, with a revenue of over Rs 1.4 trillion in FY23, says that the mega campaign aims to elevate public consciousness regarding air pollution and underscores the significance of embracing cleaner fuel options.
Launched in 2016, the campaign has featured celebrities such as Swara Bhaskar, Kalki Koechlin, Javed Ali, Ranvir Shorey and Chandan Anand. “We have also had several partnerships with organisations such as the United Nations and have come up with impactful content that has a storytelling element, as we do not prefer to preach. We have already reached more than 20 crore people through this exercise on channels such as print, TV, OTT, and digital,” said Jyoti Kumar, head (marketing communications), GAIL (India) Ltd.
Take the Green Ride campaign, for which GAIL partnered with fitness icon Milind Soman, who took a 1,400-km-long cycling journey from Mumbai to Delhi to raise awareness. Its OTT series, Hawa Badle Hassu, was released on Sony Liv and consisted of four episodes showcasing a bleak future where the world was riddled with pollution. The company co-opted stars such as Vivek Oberoi Vir Das and Govind Namdev for an event where it gifted smart nasal filters to the Mumbai traffic policemen.
So why is the B2B company pumping crores into B2C initiatives? Kumar says, “80% of these campaigns are for corporate social messaging and the remaining 20% is for our brand messaging. We would like to see people make changes to their lifestyles for the better. In terms of our content reach, we maximise that as much as possible as we get a rub-off as an environmentally responsible corporate through the campaign.”
If nothing else, encouraging peers to adopt clean fuel options will positively impact the company’s imagery, experts say. “People often assume PSUs to be boring and irrelevant. GAIL’s campaign tries to breaks this stereotype. It stitches the brand manifesto with a social contract and vision statement, and strengthens brand equity,” says Sahil Chopra, founder & CEO, iCubesWire.
Does Hawa Badlo have the potential to become the next Jaago Re, à la Tata Tea?
Nisha Sampath, founder of Bright Angles Consulting, says the campaign will benefit from further refinement. “There is more focus on the problem than the solution. I feel GAIL’s campaign is not focused enough on creating a behavioural change. There is no clear call to action in the communication,” she says.
There needs to be more clarity on what the end user can do to make changes for the better, she adds.
On its part, GAIL says it will take the campaign forward as it diversifies into cleaner energy options such as renewables, green hydrogen and compressed biogas. “In the future, we would like to add organisations such as the WHO into the list of partners. We shall continue to talk about air pollution and climate change to keep the conversation going,” says Kumar.