Nivea Men reiterates #BanBodyOdour, looks to bring back bear hugs

Building on its #BanBodyOdour campaign, Nivea Men has rolled out a new film conceptualised by DigitasLBi.

 

The film shows how body odour is the cause of the formation of modern day greetings.

 

The first scene opens in the olden era and shows the invention of the wave. A man and woman are about to give each other a hug, but the lady decides against it because of the man's body odour. She waves bye to him instead. Then, the birth of 'the first handshake ever' is shown. Two kings play chess against each other – and at the end of which, one wants to congratulate the other and goes towards him for a hug. But the body odour of the other prevents him from doing so; they decide to shake hands instead. The third scenario shows a man playing the guitar with three friends. Another friend looks to join in, and the man playing the guitar goes to greet him with a hug. The other man pulls out half way because of the guitarist's body odour, and they instead give each other a 'high five'. A voice over says 'It's time to change the way we greet, and says it's time to #BanBodyOdour' and bring back the hugs. 

 

Prithviraj Banerjee, head of agency, DigitasLBi, India, said, "It would have been simple to create a campaign around the base behavioural insight, but we decided to dig deeper and hunt down resultant behaviour. We realised that ‘affection’ is not avoided completely, it just becomes a little more remote. The creative juices flowed from this point, turning these remote forms of affection into inventions of necessity."

 

Sunil Gadgil, marketing director, Nivea India, said, "Body odour is a problem which is relevant to many but most avoid talking about it. The challenge for the brand was to create relevance around the problem without triggering the defence mechanism of 'not for me'. Thus came the idea of promoting 'bear hugs' as the best form of meeting friends/family, as body odour is the biggest dampener in this way of social greeting."   

 

Mark McDonald, senior creative director, DigitasLBi, India, added, "The task was two-fold – first, to create awareness about the problem because people with body odour often aren’t aware of it. Secondly, to put across our message in a fun, contemporary way that resonates with life today. So we asked ourselves, ‘what if modern day gestures were in fact the result of body odour?’ If so, wasn’t it time to #BanBodyOdour and bring back the good old hugs, thanks to Nivea Men Body Deodorizer?” 

 

Credits

 

Client: Nivea

Brand: Nivea Men Body Deodorizer

Creative: DigitasLBi, Mumbai, India

Chief creative officer: Partho Sinha

Senior creative director: Mark McDonald

Creative leads: Roshni Dadabhoy, Prajakta Giri

Senior copywriter: Nameet Shetty

Associate designer: Shruti Sahu

Head of key accounts: Adityan Kayalakar

Group account director: Aakanksha Patel

Senior client servicing associate: Komal Thapa

Account manager: Tanya Khanna

Social media manager: Anishka Alvares

Film production company: Hereafter Studios