shaadi.com's campaign #fastforher breaks gender bias norms, promoting equality in india

What is #FastForHer

• Indian culture is steeped in history and tradition. From the traditions surrounding marriage to those that are followed after Marriage

• We at Shaadi.com understand the importance of these traditions but also understand the need to change those that are biased towards a particular gender

• Karwa Chauth is one such tradition where the wife must fast all day until she sees the moon. She does this to pray for the long life of her husband

• We decided to turn this tradition on its head and ask Men instead to fast for the special women in their lives. After all, they deserve a long life too

Why #FastForHer

• The main objective of the initiative was to take a stand and promote Equality in Marriage through the occasion of ‘Karwa Chauth’

• In a traditional environment like India where patriarchy has been the norm for centuries, a more equitable relationship is slowly emerging, especially among young urban, progressive couples

• #FastForHer urged men to express their love, gratitude and respect towards their wife by fasting for their long lives

• All they had to do was take a pledge to fast for their wife on 11 October, and nominate their friends and family members to do the same

The Execution

The #FastForHer campaign was planned and executed in just 20 days.

What we set out to do

• To bring to light the need to achieve Equality for both genders in a Marriage

• To ensure that #FastForHer would become synonymous with Karwa Chauth

• To throw a spotlight on the sacrifices that Indian Women make in a Marriage

How we began• We started by activating our existing 1.6 Million Fanbase on Facebook to bring up

the issue of equality in the form of hard-hitting surveys about gender roles in a Marriage

• It was nice to learnt that most of our onlineaudience believed that both partners should be independent and interestingly, most believed that women should pursue their careers after Marriage and both partners should split the responsibility of taking care of the home and the kids

Week 1

The idea of #FastForHer went viral when Anupam Mittal, the founder and CEO of People Group, took the pledge on Twitter and nominated

author Chetan Bhagat and others to follow suit

Celebrities like Varun Badola, Hiten Tejwani, Jay Bhanushali and Nani also took the pledge and shared their videos online which quickly went

viral

Bollywood Music Composers Sulaiman Merchant and Meet Bros also shared their pledges on their respective Facebook and Twitter pages

These celebrity videos encouraged scores of men to take the pledge and share it with their Facebook friends . Women also showed their support

for #FastForHer in the form of images and beautiful messages

• A Microsite shared all the Celebrity Pledge videos along with details about the initiative

• The Microsite also encouraged both men and women to show their

support towards Equality in Marriage

A number of online publications like Lighthouse Insights, TellyChakkar covered the initiative, adding to the buzz around #FastForHer

Week 2

We explained the significance of the #FastForHer campaign through thoughtful images and words On Facebook

The #FastForHer initiative took off and received a spotlight from leading media like TOI, DNA India, NDTV, and PinkVilla

The initiative was extensively written about by leading Indian Media publications like DNA , Times of India, Deccan Chronicle, Asian Age,

IMPACT Magazine and Lokmat to name a few

An overwhelming amount of support continued to pour in on Facebook and Twitter from Men taking the pledge to Women encouraging the men in their life

to take the pledge

Over 1.8 Million people pledged their support to #FastForHer on fastforher.com

The Final days

• With the #FastForHer initiative already going viral, #FastForHer was now a term that became synonymous with Karwa Chauth

• A Day before Karwa Chauth, we decided to take the discussion to Twitter in the form of a contest asking participants “What 'Equality in Marriage' meant to them”

• The response to the discussion was phenomenal, with participants tweeting their thoughts consistently for two whole days

• #FastForHer and ‘Equality in Marriage’ were the spotlight of discussions.

They were trending across India for hours  

Tweets about Equality in Marriage

Appreciation and support continued to pour in for the #FastForHer initiative on Karwa Chauth

Even Raj Kundra tweeted his support, pledging to Fast for his Wife Shilpa and tagged Amitabh and Abhishek Bachchan

Men who were fasting for the First time in their life posted their pledges and their experience through the day

Men who fasted along with their wives shared pictures and tweets when they broke their fast!

Interestingly, A number of brands also used #FastForHer when wishing their fans, some showed their support for the initiative

The Result

• Over 1.8 Million people pledged their Support to the cause

• #FastForHer received over 78 Million Impressions over Facebook and Twitter

• Over 140,000 views on Youtube• Over 250,000 post Likes on

Facebook • Over 20,000 post shares on

Facebook

• Over 6500 RT’s on Twitter • Over 60 media articles around the

world including leading TV, Radio, Print and Online media.

Thank You