By Sahana Jayaraman for Pepperdigital, Peppercom’s digital blog

Over the centuries, tea trade has shaped culture and significantly influenced power and politics in both the East and the West. Therefore, it should be no surprise that, in today’s digital world, Tata Tea, a staple household brand of ”Chai” or tea, in India, is taking its role in society seriously.

See this recent Ad Age article on their new Indian ad spot, “Jaago Re.”  In Hindi, the national language of India, Jaago Re translates to “Wake Up.”  Naturally, its expected that a key selling point for tea drinkers is its ability to wake you up in the morning!

According to the author of the article, Sourabh Mishra , the “ad started with a campaign for the brand based on the proposition ‘Jaago Re,’… But the leap in the thinking happened when they took the ‘Wake Up’ proposition beyond the physical waking up to a larger call for social action.”

India often complains of having a large “gap” between those living in high rises and those living in the slums. This poses many challenges across the board – especially for marketing to the masses. Tata looked to advertise  to this very “gap” –masses of educated middle-class people.

In an effort to grab their attention, Tata honed in on an issue central to their role in India’s society with a problem-solution approach to this controversy. Seemingly just another ad spot, the message to “wake up” signified a far greater call to action than encouraging folks to buy and drink tea.

A problem that needs attention

This year, marks a general election year in India, the largest democracy in the world. As Mishra articulately explains:

A widely acknowledged problem in India is the large percentage of no-show voters, especially from the educated middle classes. So now you have this TV commercial from Tata Tea, wherein a group of young men is exhorting people to “Jaago Re” (wake up) and go out and vote on election day, because if they don’t vote, that means they are sleeping. They are handing out cups of Tata Tea to wake people up and send them to the ballots.

Sounds a little like MTV’s Rock the Vote, huh? Well, it gets better.

At first, one may feel this strategy has the risk of alienating the middle class by evoking a sense of guilt. However, instead, Tata empowers the younger generation and is very careful not to blame the people they target, but rather the infamous “process” of Indian politics. The underlying problem behind this issue is the hassle and corruption involved in the bureaucracy of voter registration. This is why the second part of the ad spot is simply genius!

A solution for change

The solution the ad suggests is at www.jaagore.com. The site’s look and feel is patriotic and appeals to a younger audience. The tag line, ‘Jaago Re! One Billion Votes’ screams out at you from the homepage. Once you enter the site it offers you all the information you need to become an awake and “conscious” citizen. It outlines the registration process in detail, tells you where you can go to register in your city, the benefits of registering, how to get others involved through Facebook, Orkut, and by volunteering. It’s a one stop source on voting.

Tata not only brings social awareness to a very real problem but becomes part of the solution as well. As Mishra states, “The brand team stood conventional wisdom on its head and used digital to connect with mass India. The brand message is an intrinsic part of this movement to “wake up” the slumbering Indian voter and get him to take part in electing his leaders.”

The article points out that the only reason this campaign was made possible was because someone understood the possibilities of reach using a digital medium.

The Tata Group, who owns Tata Tea, is a multinational conglomerate based in Mumbai, India. The group invests in businesses associated with steel, automobiles, information technology, communication, power, tea and hotels. In terms of market capitalization and revenues, Tata Group is the largest private corporate group in India and has been recognized as one of the most respected companies in the world over the years. Needless to say the company has been an icon of India.

Serving as a double entendre, “Wake Up” is a creative message for the Tata Tea brand. When this campaign concludes, whether Tata Tea sales are up or not, they have successfully positioned themselves as a socially responsible corporation cognizant of their power to persuade the masses. I’d say, for an multinational like Tata, that makes excellent PR sense.

This is a post I’ve been wanting to write about for several weeks, but I just have not had time to get it up. At this point it’s just a brain dump so take it for what its worth.

After all the buzz about Slumdog Millionaire, both in the U.S. and among the Indian community, I was compelled to watch the movie. Having lived in India in a high-rise Flat across the water from a slum where many of our child servants lived, the movie was hard to swallow for several reasons that you can imagine (don’t want to give away scenes if you haven’t seen it). Anyway, I left the theater feeling down, instead of up. I felt it very hard for me to handle some scenes and I actually considered walking out. I ended up watching the whole thing. After leaving the theater and entering a discussion about it, I gained a new perspective – wasn’t completely sold on why others loved it so much, but began to understand their point of view.

It wasn’t the scenes of poverty that affected me, but it was the manipulation of innocent children that upset me the most. The whole time I was watching, I knew all the bad stuff was bona fide and true, and that the message of hope (the game show) was so far far from reality.

Since the release of the movie, I find random people, from the nurse in the dentist’s office to the cable car driver, asking me for my opinion about the movie. The conversation typically includes them telling me that they read somewhere that Indians were upset by the movie because it brought India bad PR, and they ask me my take. For the record, I agree it isn’t the best portrayal of India, but I am fine with it because it was real, it was nicely directed, and because ultimately it had good intentions and brought the country accolades. And how does it matter if its bringing light to an important and real issue. It is what it is.

I recently watched a 20/20 special on the Children of the Mountain. The special by Diane Sawyer reports on rural children living in Appalachia. I encourage anyone reading this to watch the videos if they haven’t seen the show. It is eye-opening and in many ways reminds me of SlumDog. Even in America, a country known (or that was known) for its riches, slums and poverty exist. This series left me feeling the same way SlumDog did, depressed and hopeless. Just like in India, we choose to turn a blind eye, or even worse are ignorant to it and there are systems so far imbedded in our infrastructure that feed the cycle generation after generation — just like in India. Its movies and shows like these that serve a purpose to jolt us into reality before we go back to our own worlds again.

The videos show how corporate America plays a role in these unfortunate circumstances and how the government doesn’t react until its too late.

• Overview 
• Irreversible damage done by pharmaceutical company
•  Toothless because of Mountain Dew

My point in sharing this isn’t to dampen moods, or bring shame to America, or to strike debate on whether SlumDog was bad PR. Its simply to show yet another example that such things exist everywhere. I think the truth is powerful no matter who it is about. And, I don’t think India is a victim when shows like 20/20, or other American documentaries showcase the tragedies within our society all the time. The stories that are different and foreign just stand out and inherently become more sensationalized. Especially when they are nominated for an Oscar Award.