Candy Class
Radio City
Issue 40 | September 2016
Agency
Grey Group India
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officer Sandipan Bhattacharyya Executive Creative Director Varun Goswami Senior Creative Directors Gautam Bhasin Piyush Jain Art Directors Gurdev Singh Harshvardhan Sharma Copywriters Arjun Bhimwal Sahil Mehta Saumya Aggarwal
Date
May 2016
Background
Dharavi and other Mumbai slums are filled with the city's poorest residents but, despite their reputation, are surprisingly clean and ordered. Most children get some form of education but not, crucially, in English.
Despite India's rising economic power, English language skills are a critical enabler, allowing individuals to move to better-paid jobs and away from poverty.
Idea
National broadcaster Radio City 91.1FM teamed up with the bicycle vendors who peddle candy in the slum areas every day to create pop-up English schools called 'Candy Class'.
Radio has 99% reach in India, making it an ideal medium to reach India's poorer children.
Radio City provided the candy vendors with FM receivers and megaphones and incentivised them to park their bikes in specific locations in Dharavi every Sunday at 4pm.
During these times, Radio City 91.1FM aired specially designed lessons on spoken English. All the vendors had to do was tune in at the designated time, play the on-air English lesson, and hand out free candy to every kid who sat through the 10-minute lesson.
Results
Unknown.
Our Thoughts
In India, reading a newspaper is a public sign you're literate. Reading an English language newspaper (and they have huge circulations) is a sign of education.
Any visitor to India knows that one of the many divides in the country is between those who can't speak English and those who can. India's future success depends on equipping as many children as it can with the right skills, of which English is one of the most important. Speaking English is a critical step to escaping poverty.
But it's the millions of slum kids who are least likely to be able to pick up English, which is why this initiative is so exciting.
The innovation is in the delivery mechanism.
Sure, there's a small bribe attached (but what parent is going to object), but the use of candy vendors to attract the children and provide the vehicle through which the lessons are transmitted is a real insight.
No doubt there's a long-term benefit to Radio City (loyalty, a better educated audience, PR and so on), but this is a great example of a localised medium (and radio's strength is that it's local) giving something back to its community.
I'm also enjoying the yin and yang of an essentially low-cost medium (actually free) offering its listeners something that ultimately will have a high value.