As winter brings a surge in cold and pollution levels in Delhi-NCR, residents grapple with various health issues. However, on National Soup Day, Hong’s Kitchen, an Indo-Chinese QSR, took a proactive step to aid in reducing this pollution. Tasked with promoting their lineup of flavorful and comforting winter soups in Delhi, the agency Between Consultancy pondered if these soups could serve a greater purpose than merely providing warmth. Drawing inspiration from the steam rising from a hot soup, they conceived a distinctive solution to combat the city’s pollution: the world’s inaugural anti-pollution billboard.
According to Avinash Kant Kumar, president at Jubilant Foodworks, “As a brand, we’ve always focused on creating little moments of joy for our customers. Which is why we established National Soup Day, as a way to do something good for the consumer while being able to talk about our soup.”
Introducing Hong’s Kitchen “Soup-er Hero”, the soup that keeps you warm and safe. In a social experiment, they installed these giant bottles of soup with steam coming out of them on billboards in Delhi-NCR. But these weren’t ordinary soup bottles. Instead of steam, the bottles released anti-smog mist. This mist, using recycled water, settles down the pollution in the air & stops it from entering our lungs.
With live AQI metres on every billboard, people tracked the AQI levels around the city and the AQI levels in the area of the billboard. These Soup-er Hero billboards made a significant difference in reducing pollution levels in & around the area, leading to a substantial drop in AQI.
Not only that, it increased the eyeballs (and hands) on their soup bottles. Shrenik Cheddha, the founder of Between Consultancy chimed in saying, “This campaign was between consumer & client. It helped promote the comfort of warm soup on a cold winter day while helping with a real problem that every consumer faces everyday.”
In the future, the agency plans to take this technology ahead across multiple campaigns and brands to do their part in fighting this pollution. But in the meantime, people could finally enjoy a warm soup bottle in the cold winter without worrying about the pollution this National Soup Day all thanks to Hong’s Kitchen “Soup-er Hero”.
