Through #HeartTheHate we wanted to help a heritage brand find relevance in the lives of digital natives. Social media is where they spend most of their time, but instead of sharing and connecting, it had become a platform for shaming and hating.

We leveraged the occasion of Friendship day to bring about:

• A rise in ‘Brand fame’.

• An enhanced ‘Brand image’ through higher relevance and distinctiveness scores.

• A growth in ‘Brand love’ in terms of consideration and purchase intent.

• An accelerated rate of growth over last year’s friendship day campaign.

Cyberbullying in particular has been on the rise in India (37% of Indian parents believe that their children are bullied online). Behind the likes and followers is a dark side, inhabited by toxic people who hide behind a screen and troll viciously.

A platform for teens to express themselves was making them feel insecure instead. There was a need to turn this cruel world into a sweeter, friendlier place. This is why we decided to drown hate with hearts. We wanted to do this through an encouraging act of solidarity, which is why we used the purple heart emoji as a symbol of support against troll comments. The idea was to simply drown out the hate comments with the purple heart emoji. The more people post purple hearts the more the love was visible on the timeline and less of hate. We literally drowned out the hate with love.

Cyber bullying rates in India were soaring, causing mental health issues amongst the youth. Since the younger audiences spend most of their time online, it deemed fit that we launch a digital campaign that spoke the language of the youth on the apt occasion of Friendship Day, when the engagement of our younger audiences is highest. The idea reinforces the goodness in each one of us to reach out to someone in distress making the internet a brighter and friendlier place. We chose to do this through the idea of replacing hate with solidarity and show of support through the purple heart emoji. This resonated overwhelmingly with our audiences on all social media platforms like millions of views and thousands of comments on the launch video itself.

Our campaign inspired the youth on social media to become ‘defenders’ of the victims of trolling instead of ‘bystanders’. To make our brand connect we selected the purple heart emoji as an anti-bullying symbol. #HeartTheHate was the key campaign expression.

All this was brought to life through two videos depicting how online trolling was diffused using purple hearts. We got influencers, the primary recipients of trolling to share their experiences online and become ambassadors of the initiative. We also got a YouTuber to do an unboxing with a twist, of the purple heart.

This was supplemented with on-ground events and college workshops where key campuses were selected to drive awareness.

OOH in youth catchment areas provided scale. Platforms like Gaana, Terribly Tiny Tales, In-shorts were leveraged for their credibility.

Together, this helped spread the message of how hate can be drowned simply by posting a purple heart.

The campaign has overall delivered 352 million impressions, 52.6 million views and 25 million engagement/1.7 million clicks. Highest growth was noted especially at INR 20 & 40 priced SKUs in the last 3 years.

The campaign drove solid engagement on Facebook and Instagram. The YouTube masthead triggered 57 million views with a 38% V.T.R. higher than the industry benchmark of 30%. Conversations were recorded at 36.3k which is 6x the average of any other campaign done by the brand in the last one-year. Influencers propelled reach, creating 11.6k conversations and 16.7 million views. Twitter engagement rate soared at 16%. Bangtan Boy Band of South Korea’s fans discovered and endorsed the campaign, giving it's message global recognition.

Brand relevance and distinctiveness both rose by 2% each. Consideration and frequency of purchase rose by 3% each. The brand’s growth rate rose from 15.1 to 22.3%. Market share jumped by 1% in Aug’19.