MAM
This International Women’s Day, The Irish House hits home with a powerful insight that proves how Balance is Better!
MUMBAI: Every year, the 8th of March becomes a big day for brands, because it is an opportunity to showcase their personality through International Women’s Day.
While most brands do something clever, some go the whole nine yards to genuinely add value to the lives of the women they reach.
This year, The Irish House has done both, and done so beautifully.
With a simple tweak in their bar menu, the pan-India gastropub subtly embedded a powerful message, delivering a poignant and enlightening experience for those who walked in to any of their outlets in the country.
In partnership with their digital marketing agency, White Rivers Media, they broke the stereotype that women only drink certain types of liquor. But rather than do something over the top and grand (as brands are wont to do on tent-pole days), they chose a less intrusive but more impactful path to breaking clutter and adding cultural value.
The communication started two days before International Women's Day 2019, when The Irish House uploaded an album on their social media of title pages inside their bar menu. This intrigued their digital audience, and the conversation continued with a post the very next day, announcing all-day happy hours for women at all of their outlets.
On the 8th of March itself, patrons walking in for a drink noticed something different about the bar menu. Every title page in the menu, in every outlet in the country, had been converted from a word to a sentence that highlighted the fact that when it comes to alcohol, balance is better (the theme for International Women’s Day 2019).
Here are what The Irish House’s bar menu title pages bore for International Women’s Day:
Who said WHISKY & SCOTCH are only for men?
Who said COCKTAILS are only for women?
Who said women can't chug BEERS?
The same LIQUEURS for the Mister and the Miss!
She gets as hungover from SPIRITS as he does.
She prefers WINE, so does he!
Brands
Acko CMO Ashish Mishra to exit in July
The digital insurer’s marketing chief, who helped build the brand over nearly five years, is heading for the exit.
Ashish Mishra is stepping down as chief marketing officer of Acko, with his departure confirmed for July. He remains in the role for now, and an official announcement from the company is expected shortly.
Mishra joined the digital insurance start-up in August 2020, making him one of the longer-serving marketing chiefs in India’s fintech and insurtech space. Over nearly five years, he played a central role in building Acko’s brand presence in the country’s fiercely competitive digital insurance market. More recently, he was closely associated with Acko Life’s Unmixed brand philosophy, a proposition built around pure protection products stripped of the investment components that have long complicated traditional insurance offerings in India.
Before Acko, Mishra spent over a decade at HSBC in a series of marketing leadership roles spanning the Middle East, including regional marketing manager for credit cards and advance propositions, brand and media manager, and marketing manager for retail banking. Earlier in his career, he worked on the agency side, serving as senior brand service manager at Lowe Lintas and as executive for brand communications at DDB Mudra Group.
His exit leaves Acko with a sizeable gap to fill at a time when the brand is pushing deeper into life insurance and doubling down on its direct-to-consumer positioning. Whoever takes the seat next will inherit a brand that Mishra spent five years building from the ground up. That is not nothing.
