The Gr8 Indian Rubber Story - So It Finally Got Stretched !!

Talking of the ad campaigns for Indian rubber(condom) brands the one ad that has top of mind recall is "Pyar hua iqrar hua, pyar se phir kyon darta hai dil" ad of Deluxe Nirodh. Then there were ads of Kohinoor, Kamasutra(the one with Pooja Bedi) and Moods(Moods Please ads) which were able to register themselves in one's memory. But still there were dozen more brands which were vying for consumers mindshare but failed miserably to do so.

So what ailed these ads? I think they were low on what I call "creativity quotient". If you checkout some ads of condoms from West(e.g. Durex) you will be impressed by the effectiveness of their communication by purely being creative. I guess one of the reasons could be the contrast in the censorship regulations between India and the West. But I still feel such regulations are actually blessings in disguise as they encourage marketers and admen to be more creative in their approach and beat the system.

And one such creative campaign has been started by JK Ansell, which owns the Kamasutra brand of condoms. The campaign is not a TVC but a digital one capitalizing on the popularity of social media networks. They have come up this Facebook application Find Your Rubber which associates a personality with each condom variant and suggest the one to the user which matches his personality. This campaign is truly viral in nature and a path breaking one for a condom brand.

Surprisingly this is not the first time that Kamasutra is leveraging digital media to its advantage. About six months back they set up this interesting website called Sendsomerubber.com where in you can send rubbers to your friends. And you have to visit this website to find out the number of rubbers already sent :). Now you will agree with me that this brand of rubber has really stretched the Indian rubber story.

Regards,

Ravi