Makka Nee Makka

MAKKA NEE MAKKA
Integrated Campaign | Thooimai Mission x Kirukal
India, 2026

Brief
India's Solid Waste Management Rules 2026, mandated by the Central Government of India, required 4-bin waste segregation across every household and institution in the country. Thooimai Mission, the Government of Tamil Nadu's flagship waste management initiative, needed a campaign that would move 80 million people from awareness to action.

Insight
Most people knew mixing waste was wrong. The problem was habit. We needed to make people feel called out without feeling attacked.

A child's question hits harder than an adult's advice.

Idea
The campaign was built around one word from Tamil, a classical South Indian language spoken by over 80 million people in Tamil Nadu, India.

Makku means a careless, foolish act. Makka means people. Makka also means biodegradable waste. One word. Three meanings. One question.

Makka, Nee Makka?

We did not make the child the authority. We made the child the mirror. A seven-year-old who simply noticed. Simply asked.

Execution
The jingle was written like a children's rhyme. Simple, repetitive, impossible to forget. If a child sings it at home, the parent hears it. The habit changes without a single government lecture.

The film followed the boy catching family members making everyday waste mistakes, calling each one out with a big MAKKU. Not angry. Just noticing.

The print series placed wrong objects in familiar settings. E-waste on a banana leaf. A diaper in a fridge. Looks Odd? That is how mixed waste looks too.

The Makku Check-u Challenge invited citizens to check their bins and post their results, generating organic participation across the state.

Result
Children across Tamil Nadu started singing the jingle without prompting. When a child calls out a Makku act and the adult stops and thinks twice, that is not a campaign metric. That is culture shifting.