How Tata Salt urged the nation to pay attention to iodine nutrition on Global Iodine Deficiency Disorders Prevention Day 2018.In India, our partners at Tata Salt captured the attention of the media and the nation when they rolled out the #MissingI campaign, taking the letter ‘I’ out of national headlines in order to create awareness of the importance of iodine in the diet for Global Iodine Deficiency Disorders Prevention Day on October 21st. It was then unveiled that the #MissingI is Iodine, and consumers were asked to check whether the missing ‘I’ is missing from their body too.
The campaign had a staggering reach and impact. The letter ‘I’ went missing from the online portal of Times of India, and from headlines on Republic, a popular news channel, as well as tweets by major social media influencers such as cricket commenter and journalist Harsha Bhogle, and cricketer Gautam Gambhir.
On Twitter, the campaign trended for about 17 hours, garnered about 20,000 conversations, and made tens of millions of impressions, according to
Social Samosa
.
The campaign urged the nation to choose iodized salt.
“The role of iodine in mental development still needs to be etched in to the minds of people, and in an innovative way so that the message is not ignored,” said Sukesh Nayak, Chief Creative Officer of Ogilvy India (West), the creative group that conceptualized the campaign. “So, on Global Iodine Deficiency Prevention Day, the #MissingI idea of making the letter ‘I’ disappear across big impact media properties like TV, Print, Digital & Social definitely serves the purpose of getting the nation to notice Iodine’s importance and spark conversations about it.” (
MediaInfoline
)
IGN’s Regional Coordinator for South Asia
Chandrakant S Pandav said, “A pinch of iodised salt can give us freedom from preventable brain damage as we continue on our journey to become a healthy nation. Universal salt iodization, WHO’s preferred strategy for the elimination of IDD, results in saving 1.5 billion IQ points in children globally every year.”
The day was a giant success for India and for Global Iodine Deficiency Disorders Prevention Day. India, with the second largest country population in the world, has adequate iodine intake at the national level, but significant disparity between populations and states, and insufficient iodine nutrition among pregnant women (
IGN Global Scorecard of Iodine Nutrition 2017
).