P&G Health’s mission is to provide Healthcare as Humancare: Vijay Kumar Pampana

In this interview with Adgully, Vijay Kumar Pampana, Marketing Director at P&G Health, delves into the inspiration and vision behind the transformative ‘Ab Feel Karega India’ campaign. Pampana shares insights into how Neurobion Forte’s mission aligns with P&G Health’s commitment to elevating the well-being of individuals in India. The campaign, built upon an understanding of consumer behaviour and informed by the P&G Health Nerve Survey, focuses on raising awareness about the often-dismissed signs of nerve damage. Through a creative TVC that uses relatable verbatims to describe nerve damage symptoms, the campaign strives to empower individuals with the knowledge to identify these symptoms, seek timely diagnosis, and take meaningful action.

Pampana also sheds light on the campaign’s holistic approach to reach grassroots levels, leveraging expert networks, healthcare professionals, and innovative strategies. With a strong social media component and a dedication to behavioral change, ‘Ab Feel Karega India’ stands as a testament to P&G Health’s commitment to nurturing an informed ecosystem that champions nerve health awareness. Excerpts:

Could you tell us about the inspiration behind the ‘Ab Feel Karega India’ campaign and how it aligns with Neurobion Forte’s mission as well as P&G Health’s long-term vision and commitment to improving the well-being of Indians?

Over the years, we have observed that consumers tend to dismiss or ignore the signs of nerve damage such as tingling and numbness until they become unbearable. They often do not realise that such symptoms are a sign of B vitamin deficiency. We also realised that nerve health problems were mainly prevalent among males and females above 30 years of age, making them our main target audience for this campaign.

Prompted by the need to raise significant awareness and educate consumers on nerve damage, we launched the ‘Ab Feel Karega India’ campaign with a strong intent to spread awareness around the importance of identifying the early signs of nerve damage. By effectively portraying the essence of what a person suffering from nerve damage goes through daily, our campaign aims to play an instrumental role in helping consumers identify symptoms they may witness in their day-to-day lives, thereby prompting them to get tested and seek timely diagnosis.

The campaign aims to raise awareness about identifying early signs of nerve damage. How did you decide on this specific focus, and what impact do you hope to achieve through this initiative? Are there any plans to extend this focus into broader health and wellness initiatives in the future?

As a leader in the space of Nerve Care, Neurobion’s brand communication is built on deep consumer understanding. Our ‘P&G Health Nerve Survey’, conducted in collaboration with Heal Health and Hansa Research in 2021, revealed that over 60% of the respondents ignore early signs of poor nerve health like tingling and numbness. Furthermore, consumer research revealed that they struggled to express the sensations they experienced.

With the ‘Ab Feel Karega India’ campaign, Neurobion aims to shed light on the effects of nerve-related disorders and make consumers more aware about the symptoms. The campaign promotes regular screening to improve their nerve health and seek timely diagnosis, thus paving the way for a well-informed community. The message of the campaign film seeks to inform consumers about how there is more to life than numbness and tingling sensations caused by nerve-related disorders.

At P&G Health, our mission is to provide Healthcare as Humancare. We shall continue our efforts in driving more awareness, advocating the need for early diagnosis & treatment and promoting healthy nutritional choices for the overall well being of everyone.

The TVC for the campaign creatively fuses relatable verbatims commonly used by individuals to describe nerve damage symptoms. How did you come up with this idea, and how do you believe it will resonate with the audience?

One of our key focus areas while raising awareness through our campaigns is to simplify patient and consumer understanding about diagnosing the symptoms of nerve health disorders and share simple measures on how these can be identified for timely diagnosis and treatment. The P&G Health Nerve Survey also revealed that while over 90% of the respondents believe that healthy nerves are important, only 38% know that nerves are different from blood vessels. This led us to simplify the complex idea of nerve health for a better understanding among consumers.

People often find it difficult to explain the symptoms they experienced. They used analogies in local verbatim to describe the tingling and numbness sensation in their hands and feet. Some common local analogies included ‘ants crawling on the skin’ or ‘pin prick sensation’ to describe the tingling sensation and ‘feeling frozen’ for the numbness experienced.

This insight helped us develop a campaign through which we intend to help people understand the probable underlying cause for such symptoms they experience. The local verbatims used in the campaign film aim to increase relatability among consumers so that they can recognise the symptoms and seek timely diagnosis.

‘Ab Feel Karega India’ seems to emphasise on empowering the audience with knowledge. How do you plan to ensure the campaign’s message reaches people at the grassroots level, especially in remote areas?

Nerve care is a lesser known, but a highly prevalent topic. We, at P&G Health, through our initiatives, have continuously strived to reach out to the consumers at the grassroots level. The ‘Ab Feel Karega India’ campaign is a testament to our efforts towards driving awareness around nerve health and encouraging consumers to identify symptoms, thereby seeking an early diagnosis.

By leveraging our expert and stakeholder network and engaging with healthcare professionals and doctors in the hinterlands of India, P&G Health’s Neurobion has been driving conversations on the impact of B vitamin deficiency on consumers’ quality of life and the early action that is needed to mitigate symptoms of nerve damage. As a part of ongoing efforts of raising awareness on Nerve Health, P&G Health is also hosting a slew of other digital and on-ground activities such as nerve health screening camps, nukkad nataks, interactive product demos, and webinars to create last mile awareness.

P&G Health has a significant presence in India. In addition to the TVC, what interventions or strategies do you have in mind to make the campaign a nationwide success and extend its reach to a diverse audience?

While formulating a carefully crafted campaign for the consumers and patients, P&G Health takes a consumer-centric approach based on data-driven insights and key partnerships with industry-leading experts and platforms. As highlighted earlier, we have a holistic approach through multiple touchpoints to reach the target audience.

Could you share some key performance indicators (KPIs) you have set to measure the success of the ‘Ab Feel Karega India’ campaign? How will you assess its effectiveness?

Our overarching objective is to enhance public awareness surrounding nerve health. It is our constant endeavour to empower individuals by providing them with the knowledge to recognize the symptoms specific to nerve health from other sources of discomfort. As we witness the positive outcomes of our efforts, such as increased awareness and improved symptom recognition among the patients and consumers, we will know that our efforts have been successful.

Awareness campaigns often have a strong social media component. How will you leverage social media platforms to generate interest, engagement, and participation in the campaign?

Leveraging social media platforms for awareness campaigns is highly effective due to their wide reach and engagement potential. We plan to leverage social media to generate interest and drive the campaign to masses by first identifying which channels will be most effective in reaching and engaging our consumers.

Once we have the right platforms identified, we create the right mix of content to reach our audience and engage them. We also look at appropriate collaborations from time to time ensure engagement and credibility amongst the consumers.

Creating behavioural change and fostering awareness can be challenging. What are some strategies you have in place to ensure that the campaign’s message leads to meaningful action and impact in people’s lives?

At P&G Health, we always aim to understand the person before the patient. Deep consumer insights and understanding continue to inspire and guide our efforts to meet the unique and evolving needs of our consumers. While fostering awareness can be challenging, we have undertaken several interventions over the years to not just shed light on nerve-related disorders but also to nurture an ecosystem of care that educates people and enables them to recognize, address and take meaningful action against conditions like nerve damage.

We are fully committed to creating a more informed ecosystem through a well-rounded 360-degree approach to raise nerve health awareness, by extending outreach to a diverse spectrum of people, including individuals, healthcare professionals, pharmacists, and other key stakeholders. Through a comprehensive educational framework, we have fostered a well-informed ecosystem that can better address nerve health concerns. We are also running nerve camps and other grassroots efforts by venturing into remote areas, ensuring that awareness and understanding of nerve health is extended to the last mile. Through the ‘Ab Feel Karega India’ campaign this year, we continue to play a crucial role in driving impactful and credible conversations around the importance of early mitigation of nerve damage.