How do you train hundreds of thousands of individuals household planning?

By getting them to say the phrase condom repeatedly until it shatters any type of disgrace or stigma round its use.

Risqué as it’d sound, that’s precisely what commercial author Anand Suspi did 18 years in the past when his workforce at Lowe Lintas designed the Condom Bindass Bol (Say Condom Freely) marketing campaign in India.

Launched in 2006, the general public consciousness marketing campaign made in collaboration with the Indian authorities was created to overturn a decline within the gross sales and use of condom in eight states in northern India which collectively comprised practically half of the nation’s condom market on the time.

The marketing campaign featured comical situations the place a shy man – starting from a sheepish cop getting some downtime at a dingy police station, to a grubby lawyer surrounded by males exterior courtroom – is inspired by his friends to say condom, loudly and clearly, in public.

“Bol, bindass bol (Just say it and say it freely),” one of many them would urge him until he lastly blurted out the phrase.

The advert – which went viral and even received a UN award – was amongst a collection of campaigns on household planning in India which have used witty slogans and messages to emphasize issues of fast inhabitants progress and promote wholesome intercourse practices.

The slogans first emerged someday within the Fifties, when India opened a brand new division dedicated to household planning – the primary on this planet – and aggressively started selling the usage of contraception and strategies like sterilisation to carry down its burgeoning inhabitants.

Catchy one-liners similar to Hum Do Humare Do (We are Two, may have Two Children) and Chota Parivar, Sukhi Parivaar (Small Family is Happy Family) urging individuals to have fewer kids had been broadcast extensively by TV and radio programmes, posters, and each different medium doable. Sometimes, even elephants had been used to unfold the message within the distant pockets of the nation.

The campaigns – which proceed to this date – have turn into synonymous with the definition of household planning in India.

Experts say they’ve additionally helped create a brand new vocabulary for delicate matters like contraception and contraception, that are nonetheless thought of taboo in huge swathes of the nation.

“Men everywhere crack the foulest jokes and find it funny but the minute you utter the word condom they get embarrassed,” says Mr Suspi. Studies have additionally discovered that Indian males establish shyness as the explanation they’re unwilling to discuss protected intercourse practices of their relationships.

Sashwati Banerjee, a public well being professional who additionally labored on the marketing campaign, says the thought behind Bindass Bol was easy: to get males to ask for a condom with out hesitation. Because condom, she says, will not be delicate phrase – a nasty phrase – that must be wrapped in innuendos and mentioned in hushed tones. Condoms are utilized by everybody, ought to be utilized by everybody.

To execute this, the workforce partnered with over 40,000 condom entrepreneurs and chemists to reinforce retail visibility of the contraceptive, in order that males would usually turn into extra snug about utilizing it.

“But what eventually worked was some good old humour – you first have a good laugh and then the message seeps in,” Mr Suspi says.

While the federal government and personal organisations spent a lot money and time on the advert campaigns, not all of them had been profitable – and a few even generated backlash.

Critics say that lots of the programmes had been additionally ineffective as a result of they focussed virtually fully on ladies and continued to maintain males on the margins.

“Back in the day, women had no agency when it came to the choice of contraceptive, if at all it had to be used,” says Radharani Mitra, the National Creative Director and Executive Producer of BBC Media Action.

So ladies ended up bearing your entire burden of contraception, however males – who truly management decision-making in most houses – remained clueless and proof against household planning practices.

It’s a development that continues – between 2019 and 2021, practically 38% of ladies surveyed nationwide for the fifth National Family Health Survey (NFHS) had undergone sterilisation, in comparison with simply 0.3% of males who had undergone a vasectomy.

Anand Sinha, a public well being professional, says that “slogans cannot replace traditional counselling and the larger need for overall social development”.

But they did assist in altering social norms and making a constructive momentum, he provides.

During the 1975 Emergency – when civil liberties had been suspended – India’s household planning marketing campaign suffered a setback.

During this time, the federal government pressured hundreds of thousands of ladies, males and even kids to bear sterilisation. “The measures gave the campaign a bad name and suddenly, people were scared of the very idea of contraception,” Mr Sinha says.

For a few years after that, the largest problem was to reimagine household planning and provides it a “more acceptable, a warmer and a friendly face”.

Around this time, non-public sector corporations promoting condoms started on the lookout for extra artistic methods to promote contraceptives to younger {couples}. As a outcome, campaigns turned sexier and extra relatable.

A renewed and greater advertising and marketing of contraceptive strategies started from the late Eighties, when HIV/Aids turned an enormous risk within the West, sparking fears of its unfold in a densely-packed nation like India, says Ms Mitra

“The topic of sex was brought out more into the open and social campaigns on condoms became common.”

The most memorable of those was the condom ringtone in 2008, which was a part of a 360-degree “condom normalisation” marketing campaign.

The marketing campaign, led by BBC Media Action and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, was a part of the bigger programme on safer intercourse for HIV prevention in India.

It used a cell ringtone through which the phrase “condom” was repeated time and again in wealthy, neatly stacked harmonies, giving it the texture of a catchy a cappella association. The marketing campaign additionally featured a humorous video which confirmed an Indian man who’s mortified when his telephone begins to buzz with the condom ringtone at a marriage ceremony.

Ms Mitra says the ringtone went viral and had practically 480,000 requests for obtain, getting performed by NPR within the US and the world over from Japan to Indonesia, from South America and even Europe.

“It made the headlines all over the world, won awards everywhere, but it had real impact, which is what’s most important.”

Ms Banerjee says that behaviour change is sort of a massive jigsaw puzzle: “You kind of pull all the pieces together, and then a picture forms,” she says.

“And sometimes, just sparking a conversation can help change attitudes.”

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