ABOUT

Background:
India is one of the most high-pressure countries in the world regarding academic success in children. Academic excellence is considered a passport to success, and every Indian parent dreams of their child ‘topping’ their exams. As a result, exam time in India spells relentless hard work and preparation for students, leading to exceptionally high levels of stress and anxiety.
Brief:
How can we support, partner & help students in their exam preparation?

Objective:
Help create a stress-free environment for children that enables them to face their exams fearlessly.

Creative idea:
Our creative idea stemmed from the belief that emotional nutrition is the best way to help a child overcome stress and face exams fearlessly. To prove the power of Emotional Nutrition, we travelled to Kota – a small town in Rajasthan, India, where every year over 150,000 students arrive to prepare for prestigious institutes like the Indian Institute of Technology. But only about 3% of these students make it to the top, making Kota a place that breeds fear. A fear so great that student burnout, and in some extreme cases- student suicide is all too common.

In such an environment, we decided to provide these young students with the purest, strongest form of emotional nutrition possible- their own mothers. With Horlicks providing functional nutrition and their own mothers providing emotional nutrition, we helped alleviate stress and gave them the physical & emotional strength to power through their exams.

Strategy:
For years Horlicks has focused on fortifying conventional physical nutrition, giving children a healthy mind and a healthy body to fight exam stress. But this year we realized that doing the conventional wasn’t enough. In this environment of unyielding academic pressure and competition, to face exams fearlessly, children needed another kind of nutrition – one that cannot be manufactured in laboratories.

We called this, “Emotional Nutrition” - the love, support and reassurance of loved ones that creates an invisible shield of strength like none other, enabling students to face their exams with confidence, composure and optimism.

Execution:
On the 10th of January, 2017 we arranged for 2 busloads of mothers to pay a surprise visit to their children in Kota creating an upsurge of love, never seen before in the small coaching town. This surprise dose of ‘Emotional Nutrition’ and the effect it had on its stressed-out recipients, was filmed as it happened and uploaded on Facebook & YouTube.

Result:
In just 4 weeks, the film sparked a national debate resulting in a landmark moment in Indian advertising. The Prime Minister of India, Mr. Narendra Modi, decided to address exam stress in his speech & reinforce the need for “Emotional Nutrition”.

The film went viral overnight with 27 million+ views and 40K+ shares. Popular media channels and publications like Business Standard- Strategist, Online, CNBC Storyboard, ET Brand Equity, Live Mint, Business Standard- Smart Investor, Afaqs, Ad Age India, Ad Gully, Exchange For Media, Campaigns of the World, MXM India, Best Media Info and The Drum picked up the story helping it reach out to 80,061,600 people.