Mumbai police finds a unique way to communicate post 7/11

Mumbai, Oct 3 (UNI) The Mumbai Police have found a unique way to communicate with the people post the 7/11 serial train blasts that rocked the city.

For the first time they hired a professional agency Dentsu Marcom to help them with their project whose immediate objective was to tell the public about how they could help themselves as well as the police by being careful about unidentified objects, suspicious persons.

They wanted to place posters, stickers and panels in buses, trains and shopping malls to send out clearly that vigilance by citizens is extremely necessary in the fight against terrorism.

A quick research (conducted among general public in trains and buses) told the agency that Mumbai needed to be jolted out of its state of 'accepting' anything and everything and moving on. A sense of complacency seemed to be prevailing in a city that never had time to stop and take adequate corrective measures for anything, however grave, in its quest to keep moving on.

At the same time the legendary pride that every Mumbaikar takes in his city needed to be reinforced.

Hence the concept of 'Mumbai Unbreakable' was born.

Adrian Mendonza, Executive Creative Director of Dentsu Marcom said it is a very simple, single-minded concept that exhorts the citizens of Mumbai to make Mumbai Unbreakable by not allowing terrorism to have its way.

''Messages with strong headlines were created like 'don't let terrorism travel on this bus/train, 'you're not stupid if you look under your seat, spare a minute. It can save many lifetimes.' Below these headlines was put the action line - ''Unidentified baggage? Suspicious persons? Call 100/1090 A Mumbai Police Initiative.'' he said.

Below every piece of communication, the specially created unit of 'Mumbai Unbreakable' appears. All communication has a very distinctive red and black color scheme and uses a special jagged font to bring home the message more effectively, he added.

Some 22,000 posters have been pasted inside buses, local trains and suburban train stations. About 15,000 bus-back panels have also been pasted. Also, 50 large shopping malls in the city have posters with 'don't let terorrism shop in this mall' inscribed on them. A special photo shoot was carried out by Adrian and his team, where dramatic pictures of a little girl, a housewife and an old lady were taken. These have been used in the 'Mumbai Unbreakable' campaign in cinema slides and hoardings.

The little girl picture carries the line 'don't let terorism kill innocence.' The housewife's picture bears the line 'Terrorism does not see a gentle housewife. It only sees destruction'. And the old lady looks on wistfully as she says 'Terorrism respects nothing. Not even old age' All 171 cinema screens in the city show these cinema slides with every single show, both at the start of the movie and during the interval.

Currently 58 hoardings across the city display the little girl, housewife and old lady reminding the public to do their bit to make Mumbai Unbreakable.

The campaign is supported by General Insurance Corporation of India (GIC).

This is the first time ever, that the Mumbai Police has taken such a concentrated, unified approach through various media to communicate their message.

The entire exercise has been carefully and personally supervised by Commissioner of Police A N Roy, supported by his close team of the ATS, A P Raghuvanshi, Subodh Jaiswal and Ashutosh Dhumbre.

''This has been a labour of love. As a Mumbaikar, we felt good contributing our time and talent to this noble exercise,'' Adrian Mendonza said. ''I am grateful to Ajay Salvi my photographer-friend and the various processors and printers who have willingly contributed to make this campaign highly visible.'' UNI