Nivea Men creates strong odour imagery in new video campaign

Nivea Men has kicked off its new #BanBodyOdour campaign with a video that asks consumers to eliminate body odour and celebrate their ‘Bear Hug’ moments. The objective of this campaign is to create social relevance and empathy for a rational benefit like body odour control.

The campaign thought emerged from the prevalence of modern-day gestures such as the fist-bumps and high fives, among others, which are used to show affection from a distance. In a quirky twist, these gestures were positioned as inventions that people came up with, in order to avoid hugging those with bad body odour.

“Body odour is a problem which is relevant to many, but most avoid talking about it. The challenge for the brand was to create relevance for the problem without triggering the defense mechanism of ‘Not for me’. Thus came the idea of promoting ‘Bear Hugs’ as the best form of meeting friends/ family as body odour is the biggest dampener in this way of social greeting,” remarked Sunil Gadgil, Marketing Director, Nivea India.

Prithviraj Banerjee, Head of Agency, DigitasLBi India, the agency behind the campaign, elaborated, “It would have been simple to create a campaign around the base behavioural insight, but we decided to dig deeper and hunt down resultant behaviour. We realised that ‘affection’ is not avoided completely, it just becomes a little more remote. The creative juices flowed from this point, turning these remote forms of affection into inventions of necessity.”

Mark McDonald, Senior Creative Director, DigitasLBi India, added here, “The task was two-fold – First, to create awareness about the problem, because people with body odour often aren’t aware of it. Secondly, to put across our message in a fun, contemporary way that resonates with life today. So we asked ourselves, ‘what if modern day gestures were in fact the result of body odour?’ If so, wasn’t it time to #BanBodyOdour and bring back the good old hugs, thanks to Nivea Men Body Deodorizer?”

Video link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pXmQAZvQHI&feature=youtu.be

The video pans out over different eras in time, right from Adam and Eve to the modern day, showing how different gestures started and evolved gradually, leading to hugs become extinct. With over 2 million views in a week across different digital platforms, the video has gained much popularity among the digital audience, driving conversations around the campaign hashtag #BanBodyOdour.

The campaign also aligned itself with ‘Hugging Day’ on January 21, which was strategically used to amplify the digital presence of the campaign. The occasion was celebrated with a contest, which encouraged users to share their favourite hugs with their friends on Twitter.

This will be followed by more quirky content in the form of interesting social media posters and contests. While the posters will highlight the fictional stories behind the invention of these gestures, the contest will encourage users to come up with their own #BanBodyOdour slogans, further driving the campaign thought home.