Born out of a need to protect people from scam, spam and harassment calls by identifying unknown numbers- ‘Safety' is at the core of Truecaller.

And championing the cause of women’s safety was only natural to them whether through new products, features or communication efforts:

-‘Guardians from Truecaller’ allows users to share her whereabouts with friends and

Family on the app, ensuring peace of mind and protection for herself incase anything goes wrong

-The National-Women-Helpline-Number-181 allows her to promptly reach out to the proper authorities, in case of a distress situation

-#ItsNotOkay, a conversation platform on public forums, empowers her to spread word about the essential cause of women safety, alongside many influential speakers.

With an intent so strong, we felt right that Truecaller be on EVERY woman’s phone to empower her with ‘fearlessness from call harassment’.

Our objective: Increasing awareness and adoption of the Truecaller app in Tier-2 India.

Interestingly, Truecaller works through community effort- women helping women, by reporting harassers so that their future calls appear 'red' on screen.

We decided to use compelling storytelling, to bring alive the core of the app- ‘safety’ to empower women to consider Truecaller as a tool for self-defence against harassment over calls.

Borrowing from culture: It's a tradition across India to publicly smear black the faces of wrongdoers popularised by a Hindi idiom - “Buri Nazar Wale Tera Muh Kaala“ (Those with the evil eye, your face will be blackened).

Connecting cultural truth to product truth, we reinterpreted the idiom as “Buri Nazar

wale tera call laal” (Those with the evil eye, your call will be red”), showcasing to women that on Truecaller- ‘Red means Danger’.

Therefore, our communication rousingly captures the burst of women’s suppressed anger, ending with a cathartic celebration of them finally having found justice by coming together.

We had assumed that Truecaller’s usage would be omnipresent in India, given its ubiquitous caller-identification feature.

However, it had:

<10% penetration in mass India, despite

>90% penetration in metros and state capitals

We were astonished, given the state of women safety in small-town conservative India. Did they not have a need for safety or do they have another app for help?

No, the truth was hidden in plain sight.

Our interactions with women aged 25-55 in Tier 2-3 markets, revealed that they were never made aware of Truecaller, in a deconstructed and relevant manner.

Our approach was therefore to contextualise the use of Truecaller in their lives, especially for its Call-identification feature in a manner that could be easily understood–

USE TRUECALLER’S INTUITIVE VISUAL MNEMONIC OF ‘RED FOR HARASSMENT’

Now, women could not only identify, but also report their perpetrators on the app. The power now shifted into their hands.

We illustrated how the app works using an intuitive analogy of women publicly shaming a harasser by painting his face ‘red’, ending with a cathartic celebration of women finally gaining their power back from harassers.

-The first campaign burst ran for a focused period of 33 days, primarily targeted towards Tier 2/3 markets (urban towns with <10 Lakhs population) across multiple media channels - TV, OOH and Digital.

-We broke our exposure in the Women’s Asia Cup T20 tournament - a medium that perfectly reflects ‘women empowerment’.

-The TV media plan included high-impact regional Free-To-Air channels with mass appeal, and high-viewership shows such as Kapil Sharma, Kaun Banega Crorepati- reaching a massive 211 million Indians.

- Our message was reinforced with outdoor communication as well as through partnership with digital platforms used by mass-India: e.g. Youtube, Sharechat, Moj, short-from video apps such as Josh, MXPlayer, etc.

THE CAMPAIGN ACHIEVED MASSIVE AWARENESS AMONGST AUDIENCE

-Achieved 510 mn impressions on relevant Digital platforms like Youtube, Sharechat, Paytm, Glance, etc.

(Source: Media Partner Data)

PEOPLE LOVED THE AD AND IT HELD THEIR ATTENTION FOR THE WHOLE FILM:

-9 out of 10 of those who watched the ad liked the ad

-It was relevant for 8 out of 10 who watched it

-On Sharechat (a popular social app) and JioAds (an important media channel), 85% people did not skip the ad and watched the entire film- a factor of the film’s likability and relevance.

(Source: Top-2-Box score - Vox Populi Research Nov’22 , Media Partner Data)

THE CAMPAIGN DROVE RELEVANCE AND CONVINCED USERS TO DOWNLOAD THE APP

- 3.7 million downloads in 4 weeks

-That's over 112K new downloads added per day to the app

Source: client dashboard)