Contract Advertising’s newspaper advertisement against female foeticide which won the gold at the Cannes Lions 2008 in the public awareness category. The ad was created for the NGO, Aadhar.
Executive Creative Director: Ravi Deshpande
Creative Director: Raghu Bhat/Manish Bhatt
Copywriter: Anshumani Khanna
Art Director: Manan Mistry/Vimal Singh
Typographer: Manan Mistry
Link courtesy Anamika
Crossposted on sans serif
churumuri 
Sick enough!
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This won an award ? Really ?
I dote female children, so i do need this ( or read ) this ad. Those indulging in foeticide, dont care and wont read this ( English) ad. So who is the advt for ?
Its done by the Ad Agency for the Ad Agency just to win an award, thats all. What a sick route to take..
I found the ad sick,utterly distasteful and i think quite ineffective on people on whom it should work.
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Then what do you think Cannes is all about. Just see the other Indian entries!
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“Those indulging in foeticide, dont care and wont read this ( English) ad.”
Really?
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This is sick. Like AG & Andy said, those indulging in foeticide will most definitely not read this or be influenced enough to stop. Hope this disgusting detail will not give a few ignorant morons enough to join the foeticide bandwagon.
What kind of an idiot would list step by step instructions with names of the drugs involved ? And this won at Cannes ? Despicable..
What’s next for these ad makers ? Detail the steps of making a bomb when criticizing terrorist attacks ? Hope no one goes to these morons to get an ad done for sexual assault victims…
Senseless ad playing to the awards jury with little to no impact on stopping the crime..
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“Hope this disgusting detail will not give a few ignorant morons enough to join the foeticide bandwagon.”
If, after reading this anyone decides to “jump on the bandwagon”..he/she must be the most inhumane human being on earth!
Clearly, since the ad is in English it is targeted at the educated fools who kill female babies in search of that male heir. And don’t tell me that feoticide is confined to rural/uneducated areas!
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Like Andy Grove once said “Curse of knowledge” is sure an affliction on many minds.
It meant experience that people gain in their work is nothing but the walls of the box they are building around them. Not everyone are gifted enough to think outside their own hand-built experience box. Such seem to be advertisers of our age.
Both the makers of the ad and the jury are subjects of this “curse of knowledge.”
Having said that, saying is no-means meaning, this ad raises as much disgust as it needs to. I can throw up for two days in a row…break my record :)
Men and woman who did this ad are professionals who think, thinking like college kids again is a killer idea. Which i call: “Lack of Knowledge”
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Yea, if you can put them in vernies (vernacular) and have them in print across publications, it would raise some concern.
May be when a man who decided to get his child ejected goes out to have bondas and some brandy, he might read this on his bonda wrapped paper. (Like our vishnuvardan reads it in the movie Karna on kidney donation)
You know with some alcohol inside you the picturization is at its best!
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I don’t think that this advt would not be effective. Look. Who indulges in foeticide? Only the affluent, educated, well to do lot. Otherwise, what is the reason for the poor sex ratio in affluent Punjab? Why is it that our educated families have only sons or limited children? Whereas poor people still continue to have children. Boys or girls doesn’t matter to them.
So the target audience of the advt is apt.
The agency deserve the award.
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So disgusting to read. Sometime back I’d read that nearly 5 million girls are killed in India in the womb. This ad should actually be sent to all doctors who in the guise of saving people kill the unborn girl child.
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Disgusting yes, but the gory details of this ad will surely make any human being flinch with pain!! Yes there are men(and women, pathetically!!) who unabashedly advocate female foeticide…but when they get to read this ad, i’m sure it’ll make them think twice about doing this. And there, in making them think(which is the 1st step towards acting), the ad has succeeded!!
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Quite the contrary….This ad will probably educate (?) many in such gruesome acts…
And about people who would be made to think twice, I dont think reading this will make them ‘think’ and will probably stop them from indulging in foeticide….
The ad’s creators look to me as a bunch of perverts…they might have a point but such disgustful write-ups are clearly aimed at Awards than causing any real change…
The ‘In India, every year…’ is in an almost un readable font….and then it ssays, to avoid foeticide call 022-….
What b***s***, even if this ad makes some one think twice, is he going to ring up saying ‘thanks for awaking my Conscience?’ It might matter if people with knowledge of sex determination clinics / people in that profession thinks of calling the NGO…but then, thats far fetched….
No need for such elaborate description of the actual procedure….Which will only serve as an FYI for the un-informed !!!
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Hey educate whom?? The doctors who commit foeticide?? I guess there aren’t any who don’t know how it’s done!
But as an example, imagine a rich businessman who doesn’t want the yet-unborn girl-child to enter this world and create an un-necessary “hissa” in his will. He would have convinced his vulnerable wife as well, and the crime would get committed, unregistered by anyone but their own little consciences. May be when they do read this ad, its severity and bluntness will hit them hard(as it will hit any conscientious person!), and will prevent them from committing such a heinous crime again.
We tried telling them the virtues of female presence, we tried telling them the vices of an all-male world, didn’t work much….coz it somehow didn’t touch them….may be hitting at their conscience will work…although they’ve lost their humanity,they too are humans after all…they need to be reminded about that, unfortunately the hard way!
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I guess the same procedure holds good for aborting male fetuses. In a way this is a message against abortion not exclusively female foeticide.
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