“Don’t Eat The News” is the new mantra of Religare Health Insurance (RHI) in regard to consumption of food wrapped in newspapers — which is being described as injurious to health with emphasis on prohibition of its usage.
Noting that the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) recently issued an advisory about the harmful impact of consuming food wrapped in newspapers, Paritosh Kataria, Head of Marketing, RHI, said that Religare Health Insurance had unveiled a mass campaign — titled ‘Don’t Eat The News’ — and is distributing ‘fresh paper wraps’ with these facts printed in edible ink to street vendors, besides a helpline also launched to address public queries.
Kataria said the printing ink used in the newspapers contains harmful chemicals such as dyes, alcohol, pigments, preservatives etc. which can cause severe digestive problems, food poisoning, high blood pressure, kidney ailments and — in certain cases — can also lead to cancer. Children and the aged are at a greater risk since they have a weaker immune system, he said.
“In India, newspapers are widely used as packaging material by small restaurants, street food vendors and even at homes. Realising that there was an urgent need to discourage this rampant practice by creating awareness, especially among unorganised food operators and also people at large, we decided to engage with street vendors and replace their newspapers with fresh paper wraps containing an awareness message. A Toll-Free Number was printed on the paper to understand the effectiveness of the delivery of our message,” he said.
Siddhartha Singh, CEO, Famous Innovations — which co-developed and executed this initiative, described this idea as ‘simple yet disruptive’ because it makes use of an already available but unutilized medium. “It’s a classic attempt at trying to catch the reader with the right message in the wrong place – in a way that they can’t ignore it. Since Health Insurance is an important category that deserves far more attention than it is getting, we therefore sought a non-traditional communication format – something that is involved in people’s everyday life and experiences,” he said.
Within two weeks of the campaign rollout, over 5 lakh ‘fresh paper wraps’ were distributed and around 55,000 enquiries came in. Realising the success of the campaign, RHI intends to tie-up with vendors across India starting with six key markets which includes Delhi/NCR, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai and Pune, RHI stated.
