Clean and Clear: Every Skin Glows

The brief

To tackle a problem in modern-day India, we worked with creator Sejal Kumar to document real stories from real teenagers in order to spread the message that no matter what the colour, every skin glows. Johnson & Johnson skincare brand, Clean & Clear, wanted to produce an optimistic and inspiring social video campaign with a powerful underlying message that would help dispel the notion that "fairer is better" – a view still prevalent in Indian society. Our client had a product with a purpose; to make every consumer’s skin glow, regardless of tone. They wanted to trial the use of an influencer, looking for guidance from Brave Bison on how best to use Key Opinion Leaders to disseminate a message across social platforms.

Our response

We proposed the use of real people with real stories and conceived a film that would document the genuine experiences of young, Indian teenagers from a variety of social backgrounds. What we discovered was that no matter their circumstances, many of them faced the same struggles, assumptions and even discrimination when it came to skin tone. Brave Bison teamed up with popular Indian influencer Sejal Kumar to create a series of social posts, as well as a highly-produced campaign video, to tell the emotive and yet often heartwarming stories, experiences and attitudes the teenagers had shared. The result was a somewhat cinematic film, featuring Sejal as she journeys across India. We tackled the difficult subject initially with a sense of humour; the video beginning with a funny montage of our girls reading out and responding to ludicrous, stereotypical comments about skin tone. Once we’d established the problem, Sejal went on a journey across India to help us understand how we can start to fix this problem of skin tone discrimination. The video was published on Sejal’s YouTube channel so we were careful to create a film that felt natural to the talent and what her audience were used to watching.

The results

The video received an overwhelmingly positive response. Sejal became a real advocate for raising awareness of the problem and took it upon herself to start a movement with social posts, encouraging her fans (Clean & Clear's target audience) to share their personal experiences. The Hero campaign video, along with a behind-the-scenes vlog from Sejal, received over 246k views, 16k likes and 1.2k comments. Sejal's Instagram stories received over 4 million views. Her Instagram poll asking fans if they'd ever faced skin tone discrimination achieved over 108k impressions. Sejal's Instagram videos received over 101k views, 196k likes and 780 comments.