How 'The Protester' can be used in a marketing campaign

What are the best selling stories currently: Non violent protest.

Who can be a great ambassador for a masculine brand like Gillette: The soldier.

Gillette's Re-dedicate Gateway campaign weaves these two ideas of 'The protester' and 'The Soldier' in an innovative way to promote its new range of razors.

Men’s grooming brand Gillette has initiated this innovative marketing  campaign to garner support to “rededicate” the Gateway of India in Mumbai.

In full-page advertisements in Indian newspapers, commercials featuring Bollywood stars and on social media, Gillette is urging Indians to petition the country’s president to dedicate this monument to the soldiers or should we say the Soldier in every Indian. Ofcourse Soldiers alone arent enough to sell their new Gillette Soldier razor ;)

An international brand urging citizens to petition the Indian president to remove the memories of the kings and queens of the past and thus entrenching itself in the Indian memories. Wah wah.

Realising that the Anna protests were fun, people gathered outside the Gateway of India to sign this petition on Saturday. Have a dekho..

Ofcourse, some like the fellow seen below really felt the cause.... only to bring smiles on the marketer's faces who found it gratifying to see people remove their chappals before they took a pledge to show respect towards the cause and thus pledged to be like soldiers aka Gillette loyalists.

A bit of Bollywood tadka to complete this formula campaign was Neha Dupia who felt “Each one of us is brave and that is why this historical monument should be rededicated to the spirit of the soldier in every Indian.” I like this style by the way. ofcourse i liked Rockstar.

Hats off to the planners and client to believe in this idea and create such a campaign.

But I feel that they lost the power in such a BIG idea in its execution. They executed it like an advertising campaign with Gillete logo and Soldier packaging seen all over the place. Muting the brand here and spreading the message of 'respect the soldier' or 'there is a soldier in each person' would have worked wonders for the company. An advertising campaign could have followed this social campaign showing the new Soldier Razor launched by Gillete to show support with this campaign. To bring authenticity they could have even given a part of the sale towards some cause for the betterment of soldiers.

Jay Hind.. Jay Gillette.