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The new ‘Bin Boy’ ad from Hindustan Unilever, made by Ogilvy India, takes one-and-a-half minutes to reveal the point it is trying to make after an extended period to set the context that is both thoroughly intriguing and entertaining.
You cannot not wonder why Appu is sitting inside the bin… and continues to do so when his parents, neighborhood, and even the media are watching him with total surprise.
And then, he finally tells his grandmother: “If they dump dry and wet waste together, they are throwing away my future in the trash too!”
At first, I did not get it.
Sure, waste segregation is a huge subject and a dire necessity, but what is it doing to Appu’s future in specific? It took me some time to connect the dots.
The more people don’t segregate dry and wet waste, the more everything goes to garbage dumps and landfills together.
There, they could be burnt together.
The more such burning happens (it’s already happening, a lot), the more pollution in the atmosphere (it’s already getting progressively worse).
The more pollution, the worse it would be for the people living on this planet.
Appu, when he grows up and becomes a man, maybe in a world where people may need to fit air purifiers in homes the way we fit fans now.
And hence, Appu’s future is being thrown in the trash now.
I hope that is the intended message since that looks like the most linear path from Appu entering the bin to his future being trashed by his parents.
To be sure, I really liked the narrative idea. It successfully builds an entertaining mystery that keeps the viewer hooked and with the payoff, makes them question their own course of action with their home’s waste – ‘are we segregating? If not, is it harming our own children’s future?’
And there is no question about how essential waste segregation is at all. As someone who has recently started composting kitchen waste in a very small way for our terrace garden, I’m more excited by the waste coming out of the kitchen a bit more than the food itself 🙂 The more the kitchen waste, the more I see better quality soil in a month or so. So I look with glee when there is filter coffee remains, eggshells, and a lot of discarded vegetable waste!
But… I do think the payoff in the ad was fairly distant in terms of ‘this happens and then this happens’.
This is the same distance that does not stop us from using fuel-guzzling vehicles and we do so only when there’s considerable negative impact in the present (like fuel price, Governments mandating that vehicles older than X years be compulsorily sent to scrap, or re-registration costs increase after a few years of ownership).
This is the same distance that does not stop us from buying many FMCG products in plastic containers.
This is the same distance that does not stop us from impulsively buying a LOT of things and throwing them away very soon, without thinking about conscious consumption.
But when there is a clear and present cost, we act, of course. For instance, in Bengaluru, BBMP levies hefty fines on apartment complexes that flout the waste segregation rule. Even if those apartments can afford such fines, they still become adequate fodder for debate in the apartment WhatsApp groups, and action is eventually taken on adhering to the waste segregation norms. In this case, the deterrent is money and that works.
The intent to demonstrate to people why they should segregate the waste is much needed, and every little effort matters in this direction. And using our children’s future as a lever to motivate us to consciously think about waste segregation is also a powerful idea. After all, parents would do anything to protect their children. So, using that paternal instinct to appeal to them about a societal issue that eventually also affects the children is an excellent idea on paper.
However, the leap of logic about waste segregation today affecting our children in the near future, as told through the actions of one child who decides to take the issue head-on with his parents, seemed like a stretch to me.
So, I tried to use the same narrative core and applied it to another societal issue plaguing us now, to see how it fits… or if it fits at all.
Here is a sequel to Bin Boy.
Cigarette Boy
Appu’s teachers have called his parents to an urgent parent-school meeting. At the meeting, the class teacher says that she caught Appu, a 9-year-old boy lighting up a cigarette in the class! Since she was completely shocked at Appu’s bizarre behavior she immediately took Appu to the school principal and they called his parents immediately.
The parents and teachers pound Appu with questions, on what made him do this. He remains resolutely silent.
The next day, the neighboring boy’s (Appu’s friend) mother comes storming to their home and complains that she found Appu lighting a cigarette while playing with the area’s children. She was so shocked that she walked straight to Appu’s home to understand what kind of parents they are.
Again, no reaction or reply from Appu at all. The news spreads and people have started talking behind the family’s back.
Appu’s dad calls his mother and asks her to speak with Appu since they are very close. She comes to their place and asks Appu. And Appu finally breaks the silence about the cigarette – “If my father can use his big diesel SUV every day and let so much smoke into the air around us, and nothing happens to any of us… I wanted to see if something would happen to me if I directly inhaled smoke on my own. Barring some coughing, nothing happened to me, grandma! I now understand why dad continues with his SUV!”.
I could argue against this narrative too:
– an SUV emitting smoke is not the same as one person inhaling smoke in tight quarters inside his lungs
– why would Appu emulate his dad’s SUV driving with a cigarette, of all things?
– isn’t Appu being way too precocious and overacting by lighting a cigarette?
– Appu’s dad is not the only SUV user. There are tons of people all over the country.
But all these counter-arguments may be apt for Bin Boy too, ironically.
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Similarly, one could also construct other sequels that call upon other societal issues that parents carelessly indulge in and which affect children when they grow up. Misinformation and disinformation on the internet, for instance. Parents, even grandparents, indulge in this by not caring to understand or find out the truth before forwarding disinformation that they received only because the last person who sent it to them is trusted by them. Where would that lead us? To a world where we are constantly fearful of each other, completely mired in what divides us and looking at each other through the filters of our differences and not looking at through what unites us.
But, in each of these examples—garbage segregation, pollution, and mis/disinformation—the results are not going to be evident tomorrow, next year, or even in the next 5 years. These are long-term—though getting progressively worse every day/year—societal issues. And framing the child’s future as today’s result of our collective misdemeanor, while no doubt is emotionally effective, seemed like a stretch in terms of the payoff in this ad.
And finally, besides using negative reinforcements (penalty from city administration, children’s future, and so on), is there a way to use positive reinforcement to bring a change in mindset about waste segregation? Of course, why not?
Even though it may not be a direct equivalent, here’s an example from Tata Power, made by Wunderman Thompson.
The difference is that installing a solar roof is a fairly expensive affair and only available to those who have such roofs on their independent homes (or apartments). But consider a scenario where the city administration actively recommends composting of wet waste from the kitchen. There are small, twin-drum spinning composting units that can be placed even on a balcony that can silently do the composting task and produce compost that can be sold just the way we sell old newspapers and bottles for a fee (we do that and use it for our own small terrace garden). But yes, there needs to be a system to make all this happen.
And I’m sure there are other positive reinforcements possible too – they are just limited by our imagination.