If someone like Vikram Bawa shows up in an ad, you might expect him to be promoting the recently-rebranded Marché Pizza Pockets or another product from McCain Foods, where he works as VP of marketing. Those passing bus shelters in Toronto on Monday, however, will soon discover Bawa as the first face in an unusual initiative from Astral Out-of-Home that lets senior marketing executives in Canada bring more visible support to the personal causes that matter to them most.
Running for approximately four weeks, the ad features a photograph and quote from Bawa that draws attention to Gravis, an NGO working in the Thar Desert, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand regions of India. Gravis works to empower local communities by deploying drip irrigation technology and other tools to bring potable water in scorched areas of the country that usually require several miles of travel on foot to fetch it. Beyond that, the organization also requires those who benefit to transcend patriarchical stereotypes by sending their daughters to school. The ad featuring Bawa, therefore, shows a young girl carrying a water bucket with the words, “Their thirst for water shouldn’t ruin their thirst for education.”
For Bawa, a father of two daughters, what Gravis is doing speaks directly to issues he’s felt strongly since growing up in India and seeing the impact of empowering women — including his mother, who eventually earned a PhD and worked for an NGO herself.
“It’s sort of me rebelling against that society and the societal norms,” he told Marketing as part of an exclusive look at the Astral project, adding that traditionally much of a family’s hopes and resources are dedicated toward the career prospects of a son. “I want the world to be a good place for a girl, or a woman.”
Michael Alexandor, vice-president of marketing and innovation at Bell Media, said the OOH program, which has been internally referred to as Spotlight, makes use of remnant inventory in its network while forging a link between the importance of the senior marketing role and their personal passions that drive them outside of their day-to-day roles.
“CMOs have become persons of interest in the marketing world in general. I think there’s a high amount of focus on them, a tremendous amount of pressure on them,” he said. “This is a really nice human dimension that we can talk about. Now we get to see what’s important to them.”
Bawa said he hoped the transit shelter ads would lead Canadians to offer direct financial support to Gravis, while also contributing to the ongoing discussion about how to empower women globally.
“It doesn’t just have to be about India,” he said. “The marketing profession has a number of women, but in areas like technology or packaged goods, we still have work to do.”
Alexandor said Astral would be continuing to seek out other socially-minded CMOs among its top advertisers and will evaluate the results over the course of the year. While Bell Media is well known for its own work for causes such as mental health, he said this was a way of bringing value to individual execs using a channel with a proven track record.
“Out of home is a very important medium because it can’t be missed. It’s always there and street level in particular is always there. The exposure is going to be high,” he said. “There are stories to be told — and worthy causes to be promoted and advertised — and we have the abilty to do it.”
