The year was 2002. Prasoon Joshi, current APAC chairman of McCann Worldgroup, was working on an HIV awareness campaign for NACO (National AIDS Control Organisation). Researchers from his team were asking men from Tier II and III towns if they were inclined towards wearing a condom.

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One respondent told them that he wears a condom everyday but it gets loose by the evening. He didn't know a condom is to be worn during sexual intercourse. And then there's the possibly apocryphal story of a man who after seeing a demonstration of a condom on a banana, apparently covered the fruits with rubbers to stay safe from AIDS.

The awareness around the disease and its causes has increased over the years but is still far short of the mark. And one classic 'low-awareness high-risk' category is truck drivers: a highly mobile population who spend their nights and days traversing the roads and highways of the country. And who tend towards promiscuous sexual behaviour. Their indifference towards the importance of safe sex leads to the migration of the virus from high prevalence to low prevalence zones, spreading throughout the country.

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As per Dr Munish Chander, head of TCI (Transport Corporation of India) Foundation, HIV prevalence among truckers at 3.2% is higher than the national figure of 0.69%. And so, the foundation keeps trying to educate them on the significance of safe sex. Similar to its mission is that of Tata Motors — one of India's largest truck manufacturers. Over the last few years, Tata Motors has been doing several things to make the category vibrant.

In 2014, it launched T1 Prima Truck Racing to bring out the adrenaline-pumping racer in a truck driver who's generally perceived to be a rustic-dhabaloving man. Starting this year, the brand has decided to take the issue of AIDS head on. In April, Tata Motors launched a campaign called 'Use Dipper At Night. ' It's a phrase that resonates well with almost every truck driver in the country. But what has a night-driving guideline got to do with safe sex? Well, pretty much everything if you start a condom brand named Dipper, marketed exclusively to truck drivers. Let's know more about its 5Ws and 1H:

What: Manufacturing and selling condoms named Dipper among truck drivers and educating them about the importance of safe sex to prevent HIV

Who: Tata Motors (funder-initiator brand), Rediffusion Y&R (creative agency), HLL Lifecare (involved in manufacturing condoms), TCI Foundation (distributor of condoms across specialised 'Khushi clinics' for truck drivers, and newly-setup clinics funded by Tata Motors, selected according to the prevalence of HIV in the country)

When: April, 2016

Where: At and around Khushi Clinics in Ludhiana (Punjab), Kanpur (Uttar Pradesh), and Vashi (Maharashtra)

Why: To check the prevalence of HIV among truck drivers in India

How: Rediffusion designed the packaging of the condoms with elements one finds on Indian trucks to make it more appealing to drivers. The condoms are sold at Rs 2 for a pack of three. The government-prescribed rate is Rs 9.75, as per Chander of TCI Foundation. The balance amount was borne by Tata Motors, he tells us. In its pilot phase, the target was to sell 45,000 Dipper condoms within two months.

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But the TCI Foundation workers managed to do it within a month. Says Birender Dubey, coordinator of the activity in Vashi, "The response was great. Normally, truckers feel shy about buying condoms. But Dipper appealed to their sensibilities. Everything worked in its favour - the price, the packaging, the quality, and most of all, the message 'Use Dipper At Night.' The stock is sold out and we've been getting request for more from drivers and our other clinics ever since." It's not that Tata Motors and Rediffusion Y&R invented the idea — it's been floating in the ether for a while. But they got to executing it first, with zero media spend because every truck is a media vehicle now.

Driving The Point Home

Of course, the fact that the condoms sold out is no guarantee they will be used at the right time. So, were they? Uttio Majumdar, head of operations at Rediffusion's Mumbai office tells us: "At first I was worried they might think of it as a gimmick. But they were listening intently to what the outreach workers were saying. Of course, some were more interested than others."

The decision to sell condoms at a cheaper rate instead of giving them away for free was to ensure a proper inventory count and to gauge the driver's eagerness to buy the product. In his 13th June review meeting with the foundation, Dubey has requested to resume supply of Dipper condoms owing to an increase in demand among truckers across different regions. Since this was just the pilot phase, roll out happened in three locations only.

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"We are hoping to scale it up to 14 locations in the near future," says UT Ramprasad, head of marketing communications (CVBU) at Tata Motors. This campaign doesn't seem to be philosophising, says Priti Nair, direction of currynation. Nair's 'Balbir Pasha' campaign is one of the few classics Indian campaigns that addressed safe sex. "Campaigns that start by scaring you into doing something may not be very effective in this category," she says. By calling the condom Dipper, you're using the driver language and making the conversation easy. It's interesting indeed, but how effective can it be, she wonders.'language and making the conversation easy. It's interesting indeed, but how effective can it be, she wonders.

"When Balbir Pasha became popular, we got a lot of flak from NGOs. It's good that so many big players have come together to take this issue up now. Perhaps they should look at innovative ways of dispensing condoms now: like at dhaba counters, fuel pumps and puncture centres," she says. Condoms aren't the trucker's best friends. They take away the pleasure, is the general notion. So, if you make the condom interesting for them, you'll get more trying them out, she feels. Tata Motors, Rediffusion, TCIF, and HLL - hope you guys are taking notes wherever necessary.

Quick Take

Truckers have traditionally been a high risk category for the AIDS epidemic given their lifestyle and time spent on the road.

Tata Motors, Rediffusion Y&R, HLL, and TCIF, have come up with 'Dipper', a subsidised brand of condoms for truckers retailing at Rs 2 for a pack of 3.

The aim is to popularise condom use riffing on the common truck slogan 'Use Dipper At Night'.

Dipper has encountered an early success, with its first batch of 45,000 selling out faster than expected.

Experts suggest the distribution of these condoms spread to dhabha counters, fuel pumps and puncture centres to make them more ubiquitous.

Cynics, Please Note

A public-service campaign that doesn't help you sell your core product/service, being rolled out plum in the middle of award season: Has to be a scam, right? "I understand," says Rahul Jauhari, CCO of Rediffusion Y&R Group. He further adds: "Show me those people calling it a scam and I'll walk them through the whole process. And ask them if they think HLL will manufacture condoms for a scam? Will Tata Motors take up an issue to win awards? Will TCIF distribute those condoms across its clinics for an award for an ad agency? Tata Motors has funded four new clinics for TCI as part of this project. It's paying the manufacturers the difference in price of the condoms being sold at `2. Nobody spends this kind of money on a scam.

It's taken over a year for this project to pass through layers and layers of approvals - to get three companies together. You're telling me so many people will invest that kind of time and money to create a scam? Any good exercise happens in phases. This is just the beginning of the exercise that Tata Motors plans to carry on, on a year-on-year basis. You don't cure AIDS overnight. At least you have a brand amidst you which is talking about issues beyond sales."