Joy Personal Care, a skincare brand from RSH Global, is committed to the cause of supporting acid attack victims beyond the campaign route, underlines Poulomi Roy, Chief Marketing Officer, RSH Global.
Its latest campaign #JustEmpowerOne has been supported by over two lakh people on a dedicated microsite. The brand is donating Rs.1 to empower acid attack survivors for each person supporting the campaign.
“The support proves the fact that it did impact people on a much larger scale than we even expected. The campaign was able to trigger a sentiment within people and various communities. The whole experience has been extremely fulfilling. The kind of interactions, support, feedback and the reviews that we have received so far has really been heartwarming,” says Roy.
She explains the genesis of the brand’s association with the cause of acid attack survivors in this video. While it was looking at skin types and the promise of affordable, quality products, it came across hypersensitive skin – common in burn and acid attack survivors.
The first leg of the campaign #SkinofCourage was launched in 2019. Through this, Joy tried breaking the stereotypes that are attached to women and their beauty in the skincare industry.
“While we were brainstorming about what is the most critical skin that we can find, people came up with the thought that a burnt skin or the skin of an acid attack survivor is the most sensitive. When I sat back and thought about it, I realised that it was women from the marginalised communities who are subjected to such gender violence. That’s when I went back to the whole idea and took up the challenge of making products that can suit their skin and make it reasonably priced for them. We did a lot of research, made and sampled the product and later got it approved and distributed it to 500 acid attack survivors across the country and there was not even one complaint of any damage or any kind of reaction to their skin. That was our first encounter with acid attack survivors which was based on the concept of #SkinofCourage,” recalls Roy.
When such an incident happens in someone’s life, they are often dejected and struggle to lead a dignified life. To understand the needs of the victims better, the brand partnered up with Atijivan Foundation. In a bid to enable them to live a normal life and do something to empower them, Joy launched the second leg of the campaign, #JustHireOne.
“In this campaign, we went out and asked corporations to hire the survivors. But, later on, I realised that hiring was a bit difficult because most of these girls were not educated and lacked basic skills. At that time, we knew we needed a better strategy and that led to the foundation of #JustEmpowerOne,” says Roy.
The initiative was launched with a three-point agenda: hire the girls who can be hired in corporates, educate the girls who have not completed their education and set up small time businesses for women who are aged.
Talking about the future of the campaign, Roy explains, “The campaign still needs to continue on a year on year basis. Supporting such women for empowerment is a drive that we will carry on every year in our own way. Maybe the legs of the campaign might change but the end goal of ensuring that we add more acid attack survivors to the RSH team and support them will remain the same. You will certainly see changes in the modus operandi but irrespective of what we do, I think this is a cause we have believed in and we are going to continue doing this in every sense of it.”
