FCB India won India’s First Fusion Pencil at the One Show 2022, and the winning campaign was ‘The Nominate Me Selfie’ for Political Shakti and The Times of India. The campaign, which aimed to improve women’s representation in politics, was launched in collaboration with NGOs at the grassroot level, and urged women leaders to send their selfie-CVs to local political leaders, seeking nominations or candidatures in the elections.
In a quick conversation with Medianews4u.com, Swati Bhattacharya, Creative Chairperson, FCB India, spoke about the process involved in the campaign.
On journey of Political Shakti -TOI campaign
The whole process of the Political Shakti campaign started during the pandemic period when I got a call from Tara Krishna Swamy (Activist, Author and Co-founder of Political Shakti). During the call, she narrated the work she and her team were doing and said that they wanted a campaign idea for the Bihar assembly election. She said that there was a constraint on the budget, but added that she had the best volunteer group. Since Times of India is our client, I understood that if Political Shakti gets the backing of TOI, then the work can get amplified. Tara was equipped with an incredible set of volunteers and 140 grassroot level organisations. That’s how the journey began.
Speaking about the role of FCB Chicago, Bhattacharya said, “Once the entire campaign work was completed, FCB Chicago came in to help us narrate the story to the rest of the world. The campaign journey was a little complex because of the dynamics of Indian democracy. The idea was about making the invisible visible.
Parting notes
Every aspect of the campaign was very close to my heart. Moments like when men started to send selfies of women, women who are not even in politics started to send selfies of themselves, the campaign objective was spot-on. When we were doing the film there were budget constraints, despite that all films were made in local languages. The whole thing of authenticity of finding the right voices. Now we feel that FCB India is part of Political Shakti.
Women issues like education, health, sanitation, medical requirements etc are sometimes considered by the media as soft issues which are relegated to page 3 or 4. That’s where the politics of media also comes in, the point is these are the main issues. If we can solve the issues of women, we can solve the issues of India. Representation of women is not just for the women of India; it is truly for the whole nation. When we talk about a robust democracy, we should also start discussing about happier democracy.
