Tata Tea drives two minute onscreen blank out for Jaago Re campaign

Tata Tea has used the current ‘election’ mood in the country to drive home their ‘Jaago Re’ campaign to convince people to exercise their right to vote on election day. Lowe Lintas, which created the 'Jaago Re' campaign for the tea brand, has conceptualized and created a two minute blank out on 8 to 10 prime news channels which will feature a blank screen, followed by the sound of a man snoring in the background. After a while, the screen shows the words ‘zzzz’, followed by a message on the screen that says that they should not be watching TV but instead, as responsible citizens, go out to the polling booth and vote.  

Tarun Chauhan, executive director, Lowe said, “The idea behind creating this blank out was generated as an activation idea for Tata Tea’s ‘Jaago Re’ campaign where in our second phase of the campaign the message was to get viewers to vote. Hence the thought ‘Agar aap vote nahin kar rahe hai, to aap so rahe hai’. 

Sangeeta Talwar, executive director, Tata Tea comments, “The Jaago re campaign was widely acclaimed, very well received and got excellent recall. But in the run up to the elections, we wanted to take the thought beyond advertising and create something that was disruptive and differentiated in order to remind people that they have to live up to the commitment of registering their vote, which is how the idea came out. To put this into action, we did a two minute blank out on Tuesday and Wednesday night (April 28 and 29) from 8:58 PM to 9pm, just before the primetime news on 8 to 10 different news channels. This blank out will be repeated on May 5 and 6 again.”

Talking about how they plan to sustain the campaign, Talwar said, “We are looking at new means of engaging people constantly. The campaign is much more enduring than the election idea. We began this thought of Jaago Re in October 2007, well before the elections were anywhere on the horizon.” Talwar says the idea was really about a social awakening and the use of a pun on the word  ‘Jaago re’, which was used to literally mean  ‘wake up with a cup of tea’, as also to wake up not just physically but also intellectually to what is happening around them at a civic society level. The idea was to be aware of it as a responsible Indian citizen. Going forward, there will be a new avatar of the ‘Jaago re’ campaign and there will be a sustained effort related to it.”

Recently Jaagore.com, the online touch point for the campaign, created by Arc Worldwide, was selected as an Official Honoree for the Activism category in The 13th Annual Webby Awards.

Watch the blank out here: 

Tata Tea Jaago Re initiative from Campaign India on Vimeo.