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Bail Kolhu, the flagship brand of BL Agro, had launched a campaign titled #RasodeMeinMardHai starring three iconic actors from Hindi cinema- Pankaj Tripathi, Manoj Bajpayee and Nawazuddin Siddiqui. In its new ad, the brand normalized gender roles in the kitchen and also promoted the mustard oil marketed under the trade name Bail Kolhu. Featuring three of the most successful and loved actors, the campaign shows the men in the kitchen, cooking delicacies using Bail Kolhu, with an aim to break the stereotype that plugs all the cooking-related responsibilities on women’s shoulders. The TV commercial was conceptualized and created by Leads Brand Connect.

“Radha khana pakaati hai aur raam sabzi laata hai (Radha cooks food and Ram brings the vegetables); this is what we all had read in our school textbooks and that’s what most of us have seen around us too. Women cooking in the kitchen when men hesitate to participate in a duty that must belong to all and not to any specific gender,” BL Agro Brand Spokesperson Richa Khandelwal mentioned at the unveiling of the brand’s new campaign #RasodeMeinMardHai.

Richa Khandelwal, BL Agro Brand Spokesperson

In a recent telephone conversation with exchange4media.com, Khandelwal along with Sanjay Srivastava, CEO of Leads Brands Connect, the agency behind the campaign, talked all about the campaign, the concept, and the supporting media strategy that will take the message to people who need to hear it the most.

Sanjay Srivastava, CEO of Leads Brands Connect

Edited excerpts follow:

What was the core idea behind the campaign messaging and how did #RasodeMeinMardHai come out?

Richa Khandelwal (RK): I feel this was a message waiting to be told for a long time and it was the need of the hour to highlight this on a big scale. I read several reports around men finally taking up kitchen duties during the pandemic, and we saw this as a big part of the new normal and the concept was a natural brand fit also. As for a legacy brand like ours that has immense reach in the hinterlands, whereby this issue of men thinking of cooking as solely a woman’s responsibility is more rampant, it becomes an important responsibility to drive change.

Sanjay Srivastava (SS): Bail Kolhu is an iconic brand in most areas and already has a strong brand connect. So, this time, they didn’t want to do a regular promotion or sales-oriented campaign. They wanted to go beyond just being a good brand and wanted to integrate themselves into a more meaningful manner in the consumer’s life. That’s when we thought about connecting the brand with a social agenda that has the power to bring some change in people. There were quite a few concepts and hashtags that we discussed, for example, #HaathBataaoSaathPakaao, but nothing resonated as much as #RasodeMeinMardHai. It has a strong appeal and great resonance for the people in the markets where Bail Kolhu enjoys a strong presence.

Was it a conscious call to connect it with an old viral video #RasodeMeinKaunTha (jingle created by Yashraj Mukhate on a scene from a Hindi daily soap)?

SS: Obviously, this came up as a discussion in the creative room and we knew that this has the potential to connect with the audience.

RC: In fact, when that video came out (#RasodeMeinKaunTha), most people visualized or presented women as an answer. So, this connection with the viral jingle, in fact, turned out to be very positive for us as now people know the right answer that even men can be and should be in the kitchen. If everyone eats, then everyone must cook too.

What is the supporting media strategy for this campaign? As you have mentioned, you are trying to reach out to a rural audience with this one, are you going big on television?

SS: We are present on television but this is a digital-led campaign. The television is primarily for TVC and not really the #RasodeMeinMardHai messaging. So, it’s a 60:40 digital to traditional media ratio of marketing spend for us. We are investing a lot in influencers and digital marketing.

But as you rightly mentioned, we are aiming to reach out to rural and semi-urban audiences seriously, we are spending a significant amount of our expenditures on the radio. It is not only about placing out jingles but we are trying to incorporate our messaging in the key content being presented by the RJs. We are also running some interesting contests for the listeners to promote the message.

On television, we have tried to break beyond the usual whereby ads for products like ours are mostly run during the time slots or shown where the female viewership is higher. We have expanded the FCTs beyond prime time and we are going very aggressive on genres like news where the male viewership is more.

RC: In addition to all of this, we do not want this to be a small-time effort or one-off campaign. While the initial planning is to run this campaign for a duration of three months, we want to take it beyond that. This is just the launch phase. Going ahead, there is going to be a 360-degree execution wherein we want to do a lot of on-ground activities, tie-up with more big influencers who can prompt the men to pick the ladle. Outdoor activities are going to be the key going ahead. We want to make all possible efforts and keep making them till we reach a point wherein the message turns from just a conversation point to a real tangible change. And it will take quite some time for that. We are very clear that we did not want this campaign to be a women’s day token or a short-term activity to catch eyeballs.

How was the experience of working on this campaign? What kind of responses are you getting from the audience?

SS: Right from the conceptualization to execution, it took us seven to eight weeks to create this campaign. As everyone, right from creative teams to production teams, to media teams, were working in-house at leads, it was a collaborative effort. And I think we did a good job on it as the idea is there, the men are there in the kitchen, and there is a great brand connection.

RC: I am overwhelmed by the response this campaign is getting. There are so many women who have got in touch with us thanking us for making the campaign. And deliver such an important message. We are sure that we will be able to drive some change and bring more men into the kitchen.

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