Bridgestone's By Her Side breast cancer campaign misses the hard-hitting league

author-image
Sarmistha Neogy
Updated On
New Update
By Her Side

Bridgestone India Pvt. Ltd., a subsidiary of the world’s largest tyre and rubber company and a Worldwide Olympic Partner has launched the Bridgestone Pink Valve Cap Donation Drive Campaign to create awareness against breast cancer. Three online films have been released as part of the campaign using the hashtag By Her Side

In each of the films, the protagonist is someone's wife, mother and sister. It highlights that how a woman has always taken responsibility of things around her, like her career, the house, and everyone. But there's this one thing she has never taken seriously - A Breast Cancer Test.

The three month long campaign is supported by Olympic Silver Medallist and Bridgestone India brand ambassador P V Sindhu to generate funds for the Tata Memorial Hospital Mumbai that hosts a specialist cancer treatment and research centre to provide cancer treatment and care of underprivileged patients.

The tonality of the campaigns are simple and it urges everyone to act before its too late. The reason being, 85 percent of the women diagnosed with breast cancer have no family history, so timely tests are very important. So you may be her husband, son , brother, daughter or anyone, if you care about her, take her for a check-up before its too late. On social media as well, the brand has been promoting this thought through their posts.

The videos have garnered decent viewership, ranging from few thousands to a lakh viewership. However, it has still not been able to start any conversations on social media and there is no noise around the hashtag By Her Side

Expert view

We spoke to Prasad Ajgaonkar, CEO of iRealities to get his views on the campaign and if it has the potential to stand out and create a mark.

publive-imagePrasad Ajgaonkar, CEO of iRealities said, "The ads are very lengthy and the narrative is repetitive. The monotony of the narration and static visual aspects make the flow slow and boring and most of the viewers must have switched before the actual message comes out.

It seems the agency is more interested in making it emotional than communicative. The message is for whom, the one who should take the test or for the one who is supposed to be by her side.

Sometimes while trying to be over creative, we lose the essence of the message and this is a typical example of the same."

He further added, "The campaign with it’s design seems to have been directed to SEC B+ and above. The women in this category are educated and self-aware. Most of the decision to not take the tests are not based on fear, but mostly on optimism bias. The message should have considered this and if confusion, then it is better to make it direct. The Bridgestone’s efforts are lost in the whole communications. If a brand is investing in a campaign , agencies have to be responsible to that investment and see that the justice is done to it."

So while, we have seen several hard-hitting campaigns from brands, both Indian and global championing the cause of breast cancer awareness, Bridgestone India's campaign falls flat in terms of the execution and narration. In fact, the story-line for all the other films gets quite predictable, if you have watched one.  Talking about recall and impact, the films fail to create a mark.

campaign Digital digital campaigns Social Media Campaigns breast cancer awareness Online bridgestone pv sindhu breast cancer awareness campaigns bridgestone campaigns Bridgestone India by her side by her side breast awareness campaign by her side campaign iRealties P V Sindhu Prasad Ajgaonkar