MUMBAI – Reports show that only a third of the total Internet population in India are women and this gap is expected to grow with growth in Internet users.
In November 2013, Google India launched ‘Helping Women Get Online (HWGO)’ with the objective of reducing the Internet population gender gap in India. Earlier this year, Google India launched the digital leg of the HWGO campaign to encourage Internet users to step up and help a women get on the Internet and understand how she can use the web to get ahead in life.
The Internet has completely transformed the way we live our lives. Everyday people are discovering new opportunities and finding newer and better ways of doing things on the web to get ahead in life. #TogetherOnline is an effort to empower women in India with the knowledge of Internet and how they can use it do different things in their daily lives.
To take this concept further, Google India along with Lowe Lintas Delhi conceptualized a film to inspire young, Internet-savvy people to help their mothers explore a whole new world – that of the Internet. The film highlights the innocent fear of the first day of stepping into a new world.
“While there is low awareness about the benefits of Internet amongst women in India, there are many who want to get online to succeed in life. We’re working with various partners to help spread awareness about the benefits of being online amongst women,” said Sandeep Menon, Marketing Director, Google India.
“And today, we’ve launched a new film to inspire young digital natives to bring their mothers online. There are large number of educated women in India with internet access in their households, but they still do not use the internet. We are making an appeal to their children to hold their mom’s hand as she discovers a new world online,” she adds.
The task was to capture the correct emotion that would drive young people to give back whatever they could to their mothers. This insight was used as the key trigger. A kid’s first days at school has an emotional similarity with mother’s first days on the Internet – the nervousness, the hesitation, the alien environment, it’s the same. This realisation forms the basic premise of the script.
“We wanted to encourage hand-holding. Our target is the internet-savvy young, who often get easily discouraged when they have to take someone through the basics of online. The barrier is this thought that runs through our heads – ‘Mom don’t worry, tumse nahi hoga, I’ll come and do it’. We wanted to present the reward of not giving up, going through with the teaching and converting them into independent onliners,” shared Amer Jaleel, National Creative Director, Lowe Lintas + Partners.
“#TogetherOnline is the first campaign from our association with Google and soon you will see a lot more work in the coming months on various other projects. This campaign gave us a unique opportunity to present mother-daughter relationship in a really different way,” commented Naveen Gaur, President, Lowe Lintas.
The campaign has been launched on social platforms and is being well received by the online users.
