Navarasa and Marketing Communication - Karuna
Karuna is the rasa of sadness and, in the context of advertising - empathy.
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It’s the one that makes you pause. Makes you feel.
Makes you stay quiet for a minute, and just sit with what you’ve felt.
It is seeing someone else’s pain and remembering your own.
It could make you well up, or simply sit up and think.
It’s meant to stir something deeper.
To move beyond laughter and logic, and reach the part of your audience that’s all heart.
It’s also the hardest rasa to pull off well.
Because the moment you try to manipulate emotion, people smell it.
And they walk away.
Karuna doesn’t work if it’s trying too hard.
Clever headlines and perfect art direction seem uncomfortable.
The more beautiful you try to make it, the more distant it feels.
This is the one rasa where the message has to feel almost untouched.
Like a story someone told you in a whisper.
Quiet, raw and imperfect.
The execution needs to be honest and earnest.
Karuna needs you to get out of the way.
Honest writing, visuals that are real, even flawed.
Shots that linger. Music that doesn’t announce itself.
Voiceovers that feel like someone’s just talking to you, not performing.
Most importantly, the product or brand needs to step back.
Let the story do the work.
There’s no room to put on a show.
No wordplay. No high-production beauty shots.
The most powerful Karuna campaigns feel almost invisible.
Because the idea isn’t to impress. It’s to connect.
And you can only do that if your brand has earned the right to speak.
A great Karuna ad almost always feels like a short film.
You forget it’s an ad.
And if done well, you forgive it for being one when it ends.
This is where brands come when they want to make people pause.
When they want to be remembered for saying something real.
It’s what a brand might turn to when it’s trying to humanise itself.
Not sell. Not convince. Just be human.
Public service campaigns live here, of course.
But so do some of the most memorable brand ads we’ve seen.
The ones that stay with you long after you’ve forgotten what they were selling.
Take the Vicks ‘Touch of care’ commercial, for instance.
The entire film is the story of an orphaned girl who was adopted by her new mom.
This new mom loves her so much.
She works day and night so they can afford good education.
Eventually, the camera pans to the mom – a transgender woman, and we hear the girl say, “This is my mother. Isn’t she lovely?”
That moment shatters your heart to smithereens because, of course she’s lovely!
And you realise that Gauri Sawant, the woman on whom the ad is based, is more beautiful than any pageant winner could ever hope to be.
The girl’s voice goes on to say that her mother is denied basic rights, and so she wants to be a lawyer. It ends on the mother sobbing because she’s just dropped her precious baby to the boarding school. And the viewer’s heart sheds a million tears because there’s so much wrong with this world, and yet hope springs eternal.
In the entire commercial, there’s only one product shot.
Out of focus. If you spot it, you spot it. If you don’t, it doesn’t matter.
Sure, it ends on the brand logo with the super ‘Caring for families for generations.’
At that moment, everybody knows it’s a television commercial.
That the marketer hopes to sell bottles of Vicks.
But nobody minds it.
Because, in a world screaming sales and consumerism, one brand stopped for a moment.
To connect with the viewer at a human level.
And just like that, Vicks moved from being a functional brand to a symbol of caring.
And that’s the whole point.
P&G’s ‘Thank You, Mom’ is Karuna Rasa.
It doesn’t sell a product. It evokes a pause.
Intimate glimpses into the lives of athletes and their mothers.
The campaign reveals the silent sacrifices, the quiet strength, and the love that’s fierce but often invisible.
It’s not a tearjerker for the sake of emotion. It’s a tribute.
The rasa isn’t loud or dramatic. It’s tender, dignified, and deeply human.
Karuna here becomes the bridge between achievement and the unseen hands that make it possible.
Few ads have managed to stir this rasa at such a global scale, across cultures, without losing authenticity.
Karuna works when the brand feels like it wants to help.
Not because there’s a brief. But because it actually feels something.
When it uses its platform to say something that matters.
Pointing at a crack in the world and saying ‘This isn’t okay’.
Mount Sinai Hospital once ran a print ad that said, “We turned a child who couldn’t hear into a typical 2-year-old who doesn’t listen.”
The line hits hard. It’s not clever or witty.
It’s a mere statement that tells you something real, in a way that sticks.
You smile. Then you swallow a lump in your throat.
Public service campaigns tend to live here.
Eye donation ads. Organ donation appeals.
Campaigns about domestic violence, child abuse, mental health.
But increasingly, brands are also stepping into Karuna when they want to go deeper.
When they want to be remembered not just for what they sell, but what they stand for.
Another example of a brand capturing the Karuna rasa along with the product placement is the Hockey ad for the Times of India. Though the product was an integral part of the commercial, it never took the attention away from the story.
The film opens on young Prakash Mirajkar who, according to announcement in the TOI, has just been selected as a part of the Indian Olympic Hockey Squad.
Everyone around starts dancing, a dhol appears, and the procession makes way to his home where they show the newspaper to the parents.
The mother takes it to the grandfather, who reads the news through broken glasses.
He enters a room full of old memorabilia and from a battered old trunk, pulls out an old TOI that has printed the news of him being dropped from the Indian Hockey camp.
He looks back at the news of his grandson’s selection, has a proud smile, and does a little jig all alone. The bittersweet super ‘A day in the life of India’ reminds you that the TOI is about good news, bad news and everything in between.
That’s Karuna. Soft, undramatic and at times, devastating.
Or Ariel’s ‘Share the load’.
The campaign starts in Raudra, demanding equality.
And later transitions into Karuna.
It’s a father apologising to his daughter.
Because only her mother did all the housework.
Because he never stepped in when the little girl chose to be the hardworking housewife while playing ghar-ghar.
The whole ad was about his realisation that he never did anything about the gender roles even in his own house.
The product just happens to be there.
And when you’ve built Karuna right, people remember.
A powerful ad film is one that’s minimalistic.
Here’s an example of an old ad by Leo Burnett, India.
The film opens on a man about to leave his house just as there’s a power cut.
He’s in complete darkness. Helpless.
It’s an old building with rickety, wooden stairs that could be dangerous if not fatal.
He hears another guy on his way out, who offers to hold his hand and guide him out.
One can barely see the what’s on screen, hardly any music.
Just the sound of conversation.
Our man tells his new-found friend how grateful he is to have found him just in time.
And goes on a rant about power cuts.
“Isn’t it so very inconvenient to not be able to see?” he says to the kind stranger.
They have now reached outside the building where, thankfully, there are streetlights.
“Yes it is”, responds the stranger.
Then he quietly pulls out a collapsible white cane from his pocket, and goes on his way.
One can see nothing but the silhouette of the man walking away.
And hear nothing but the tapping of his cane against the ground.
A calm, quiet super appears, appealing for eye donation.
Post-pandemic, post-recession, post-endless bad news cycles, people are emotionally worn thin. And brands that show up with sincerity, who acknowledge the exhaustion, the grief, the longing - we remember those.
A word of caution. Not every brand belongs here.
Karuna is not a trend to hop on.
If your brand has always been a smart-ass or a joker, suddenly showing up with a sad violin in the background will just make people suspicious.
You need to earn the right to be heard in this tone.
You can’t fake this rasa.
You can’t copy someone else’s Karuna and try to recreate it.
The moment you do, it becomes performance.
And performance breaks the spell.
Karuna works best for brands with empathy in their DNA.
Brands that are built on care, trust, support.
Healthcare, insurance, education, social impact products.
Or even large brands that’ve built enough goodwill to shift gears, if done right.
It comes into play when your brand stands for care.
When you’re speaking up for something that matters.
When you want to stop people in their tracks, and make them feel.
And when your brand has lived the values it’s now speaking of.
But never ever is it to be used just for effect.
The moment people feel used, the rasa collapses.
And unlike Hasya or Sringara, Karuna can’t be turned on and off casually.
You either mean it, or you don’t.
It’s also a powerful bridge.
From Veera to Karuna.
From Sringara to the loss of it.
From Raudra to helplessness.
From Bibhatsya to self-worth.
From Haasya to that moment when the laughter dies down and leaves behind a quiet ache.
But no matter where you’re coming from, the rule remains the same.
Say less. Mean more.
Let the audience fill in the blanks.
Let them bring their own stories to yours.
Once you’re in Karuna, the only place to go is deeper honesty, or healing.
Which could lead to Shanta. Or occasionally, Veera.
Because Karuna isn’t about tears. It’s about truth.
And how it makes people feel seen.
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