Agency gives free candy to Mumbai slum kids who attend sponsored pop-up English schools
Grey has unveiled an idea for radio station Radio City 91.1FM to teach English to Mumbai slum-dwellers by hiring candy sellers as pop-up schools.
Mobile candy vendors who visit slums every day have been given FM receivers and megaphones and a brief to park their cycles in specific localities at a certain time when Radio City 91.1FM will air lessons on spoken English. The vendors will hand out free candy to each child who sits through a lesson.
In a press release, Grey described the idea as a “first of its kind innovation” which it planned to scale to 10 other cities across India and ultimately reach 3m underprivileged children.
The idea will be supported by on-ground promotions and activities for children in slums by DJs and other radio personnel.
Abraham Thomas, CEO of Radio City 91.1FM commented: “Candy Class is an ambitious project and we have rolled out the first phase. Dharavi, as one of Mumbai’s largest slums, seemed to be the right place to start our efforts to give back to Mumbai in a special way under the ambit of Rag Rag Mein Daude City. Using the power and reach of radio to make a difference to the lives of these children might help them gather a lifeskill that they might not otherwise have been fortunate enough to get”.
Sandipan Bhattacharya, CCO of Grey Group India, added: “What’s really interesting is the way this initiative brings together the power of radio with the cycle candy vendors for a common purpose. Candy Class is not elaborate, does not require huge infrastructure and investments, yet is incredible when you consider the economic and social implications of speaking the language in a country such as ours.”
Wonder if they could stick an iodine bindi on each kids forehead while they’re at it…you know….so they don’t get all iodine deficient . And then give them all a dengue curing umbrella to take home.
ReplyHow is that iodine project by the way? Any updates one year on?
Replyhttp://static4.fjcdn.com/comments/3819816+_629dc5e58d873129f847acd98327431b.jpg
ReplyWish Grey would stop using Indian people as a “sure-win” for emotional content at award shows. It’s disgusting, and materialistic, and highly opportunistic. If you’re really out to do good, like Grey For Good suggests, why not just do good without submitting for awards??
I thought bindi was bad, but this bar has reached a new low.
ReplyThis feels wrong on so many levels.
ReplyWhen I was in high school we participated in a ‘teaching slum kids’ initiative which was one of the choices for a community service credit. That program had been running for years before I participated in it, and is probably still running, 31 years later, and it does some real good by being long term and consistent. The skill we focused on teaching, by the way, was maths and basic science rather than English.
If slum kids lack access to education, then there are many more important priorities than teaching them English
I don’t think you can learn a language just by listening to the radio
And I don’t think kids will come back for the same candy over and over.
So strategically, this is not a smart or effective way to deliver any real results. It looks like the kind of crap that agency people cook up in their ivory towers where no real consumer is allowed to penetrate.
If by some miracle they actually continue this for a year and really manage to show that a sensible number of kids learned English (without contracting cavities in the process) we can then celebrate their generosity and intelligence.
Until then, it’s just typical ad agency bullshit.
They use India and Indian charities for context because just about every second person in Grey Sinagpore is from India…including the CEO, the CCO, the Regional CEO and a number of other very senior positions. So they are very comfortable with picking issues in India. Plus the Indian landscape is hard to police…if they say the charity is in some small village, who is going to check a country of 1.4 billion?
ReplySlum Kids are solid gold for Grey, aren’t they?
How about a Cannes rule that ‘for good’ Lion programmes must have run for 6 consecutive months before they qualify?
ReplyNot only is it a self-serving idea, it’s also a really bad one too. Bribe kids to learn English by giving them candy. Wows… which genius came up with that insight? Terrible execution and no insight whatsoever. The creative team and planners must have been asleep at the wheel on this one.
ReplyI like how these shit campaigns are always part of a ‘first phase’ or ‘trial’ and never do seem to make it to the second phase.
Regardless, it will pick up an award or two. The Bindi one was equally manipulative and ineffective, but the international juries sure do get moved by poor Indians.
ReplyWell since clients have gone out of the window, and they can’t control or manipulate that, they have shifted focus to awards. Bindi, umbrellas, candies, footballs.
Not so long ago, to meet the cannes deadline, an ECD and EVP, got together and locked an Associate CD into a room and made him call a huge list of charities to pitch an idea they had dreamt up together. Finally, some danish charity agreed.
You see, it isn’t enough to come up with a shitty idea, Grey realised need a charity to say that the campaign is for them. And then they can package it up, make a film, build a site, thunderclap a social media campaign and boom, here is their shot at an award. The funniest part about this wasn’t the round of phonecalls but the regional ceo sending emails to all the employees to sign up and endorse the campaign and then hounding down individuals who didn’t sign up and threatening them with action if they didn’t endorse it.
Yeah Grey is so good. And the people who work their are gods gifts to humanity
ReplyLucky India, to be able to have their lives improved so much by all these scam ideas! Wow, they must be thanking their gods for Grey now! How would they live from May to March every year, is a miracle.
ReplySpikes Asia Grand Prix for this?!
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