Kan Khajura Tesan

Why it works

In the 'media dark' villages of Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh, power cuts meant traditional media reached no more than a fifth of people, yet many were already using cheap mobile phones for entertainment. So Hindustan Unilever, with Lowe Lintas and media agency PHD, built its own station on the phone. Listeners gave a free 'missed call' to a toll-free number and were rung back with around 15 minutes of Bollywood music, jokes and a presenter, broken up by ads for Unilever brands such as Wheel, Close Up and Pond's. It is studied as a brand creating a medium where none existed instead of buying one. According to the award entries, it signed up eight million subscribers in six months at about four US cents per contact. It won three Gold Lions at Cannes in 2014, two in Media and one in Mobile, took the Grand Prix of the 2014 WARC Prize for Asian Strategy, and topped the 2015 WARC 100 ranking of campaigns.