Wednesday 19 June 2013

The changing phase of Creative Communications in Public Service Sector



Today, if creative communication in public service sector should continue its power of achieving long term sustainable behavior within the community, it needs to be coherent with the evolving needs of the society. The public service campaigns, in contemporary times, need not be only mass awareness driven but mass infotainment driven. Earlier where our IEC prototypes reflected more colloquial influences, today they are enjoying more universal feel. The reason for change in the pattern and type of communication lies in the changing aspirations, new media and its easy accessibility. Where youth in rural India is connected with his peers across globe with just a shake of social networking app, there is a desire to move from local to global. Though the same implication may not hold true for the older generation in Indian rural, the need for change is penetrating deeper. Earlier the expected mothers in rural areas looked for the information in the collaterals and communications. Today the ‘moms to be’ are looking for the aesthetics of the collaterals and the depiction of their own personality.
They better connect with those artworks which depict ‘them’ more beautifully.  As a part of our primary research in Bihar, we developed two artworks and sent them across the community where our campaign was to go live.  One artwork was developed keeping the strong local influence and the other artwork was given a more universal feel. The target audience found better connectivity to the latter artwork as the latter depicted progressive and beautiful characters. The important thing to remember is that rural India is receptive to only those innovations/changes/products which add modernity to their existing Indianness not the ones that endanger their social structure.