Cockroaches encroach on Instagram posts in a campaign by Godrej HIT

The campaign correlates people’s love for sharing food pictures online; Instagram, and how this universal love for food is also mutually shared by the menacing cockroaches in real life. However, roaches reciprocate this love for food by spreading food poisoning. The campaign aims to create awareness around how roaches spread food poisoning and therefore needs to be treated.

As part of the initiative, multiple profiles of cockroaches were created on Instagram with interesting names to entice the users. These roach profiles emulated their real-life behaviour on Instagram i.e. to get attracted towards food. Furthermore, the roaches went on a liking and commenting spree on various food pictures shared on Instagram by people. Soon after Instagrammers started receiving strange notifications such as Cockroach_The_Boss liked your photo or Bhukkad Cockroach commented, thereby creating curiosity.  When the surprised Instagram users visited the cockroaches’ profile they came across Lal HIT’s messaging in the feed: Apply Lal HIT to stop cockroaches from ruining your Diwali.  The virtual Instagram cockroach, liked and commented across 6,000 food pictures in a week including some food pictures from celebrity chefs which in turn helped to build intrigue with reach.

Sunil Kataria, CEO - India and SAARC, Godrej Consumer Products Limited said, “Food and social media are key hooks for drawing people’s attention today. Building on this opportunity, for this campaign we created peculiar messaging to run an awareness drive around roach infestation and getting homes Diwali ready. We used digital media in a fun and interesting manner to reach out to our consumers by creating a virtual roach infestation on Instagram. The campaign has received an overwhelming response with a reach of 3Mn and an engagement rate of 8% it reinforces the brands philosophy of engaging with the target audience in an engaging way. Being the category leaders, we always strive to make the lives of our consumers better and this time we wanted every Indian home to celebrate a roach-free Diwali. To liberate consumers from the constant evolving pest menace, we at Godrej constantly upgrade our technology so that consumers can have a worry-free time with their families".