Someone once mentioned, a good communications strategy is all about how well one observes the situation, assimilates it, and reflects it back within a particular cultural context. And it is this cultural context that plays a vital role in cutting through all the clutter, driving home the message and spelling success for the campaign.

While I was back home in Bombay this time, I made a conscious effort to look at all Bombay life within the cultural context and capture images that best showcased the pulse of this city.

One thing that struck me the most is how everything we do in India has a spiritual aspect to it. Right from welcoming people into our homes, to hitting the roads, to starting off your daily business, spirituality is everywhere. Boy, even the rikshaw meter resembles the elephant god, although this elephant god looks kinda westernized.

So, looking at Bombay from this different perspective, there was one thing that caught my eye this time around, which I thought was one effective communications strategy.

See, about five years ago, when Bombay was just starting the process of cleaning up, it encountered one major issue. People were not respecting the walls, and that meant random spitting and urination (yes, I said it) on every corner wall across the city. These paan-stained walls were one big eyesore. What could be done to combat this?

And then it happened. Someone came up with this one brilliant strategy - Play up to the collective spiritual conscience of the Indian population to stop people from doing what they do on these walls.

Solution: Driven by the key insight that no one would desecrate a holy place, the Bombay Municipal Corporation decided to put up pictures of gods and goddesses on all walls, so that people think twice before doing their dirty deeds.

The result: It couldn’t have worked better. That wall you see up in the picture there hasn’t been spat upon or peed upon (yes, I said it again) in about five years.

And, once they saw that this was working, the powers that be spread this tactic across a lot of public walls in the city. While Bombay is still a little dirty as any major city in the world, these little gods and goddesses did a much more effective job than any “No spitting” sign could have accomplished. Inspiring to see that something so simple ended up being something so very effective. Way to go!

P.S. That’s Lakshmi, goddess of wealth and fortune