The Campaign

Studies say that old habits are hard to break and new habits are harder to form. But it is possible to form new habits through repetition. Hence our weapon to break inertia: Repetition of message without being preachy.

Creative Execution

Two of the most effective and efficient mediums were deployed to spread the message: Digital for Urban and Mobile for Rural. Digital Media (Urban India): To reach 1.1 Million Indians, YouTube ensured maximum reach and virality. With the intention of chasing views, the video was released as a masthead and within hours of releae it went viral on the platform. In a record breaking duration of just 60 days the campaign became YouTube India’s biggest campaign in 2015. Further, the video got shared freely on Facebook and Twitter as well. Mobile (Rural India) Cleanliness messengers program: To reach out to rural India, an innovative medium of mobile technology with the of HUL factory workers was deployed. The factory workers visited villages surrounding their factory location and dialed a toll free number. On getting connected a recorded message to teach behaviour change was played back with the aid of speakers.

It was YouTube India’s largest campaign in 2015 with the highest number of views in a span of two months. Campaign garnered over 21.25 million views on YouTube. 100% video completion rate of around 22%. Demographic targeting helped the campaign achieve maximum reach & create awareness. The video reached 8.08 million unique users on Facebook and garnered 68,600 views on Twitter. The on-ground factory worker program touched 2,00,000 lives with the help of just 100 workers. (Source: Internal data, HUL) Brand measures across the chosen brands moved: • 83% agreed to change their and their family’s habits after seeing the communication (Source: Qualitative survey of 800+ LSM 3-10 consumers in 4 cities in India.) • 87% Awareness of HUL supporting Swachh Bharat • 63% Recall of Haath Munh Bum • In future, 47% said they are more likely to use PureIt, while 46% said for Lifebuoy and 44% for Domex.

India suffers from huge hygiene and sanitation issues. While the government of India is working at providing for infrastructure to resolve the issues, there still lacks the awareness about their usage. Hindustan Unilever Limited wanted to spread awareness regarding the infrastructure across the country. As a result different media were deployed to reach different audience sets like mass reach platform for Urban India and an innovative mobile led outreach program to educate the rural audience.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

The issue at hand wasn’t solvable by one brief, one client or one campaign! In fact, it wasn’t a business issue, but a National Issue of epic proportions. Hence a peek into our product portfolio helped us identify 3 brands that were intrinsic to hygiene related illness prevention – Lifebuoy, Domex and PureIt helping people adopt 3 simple clean habits: washing hands with soap, using clean toilets and drinking purified water. In order to make the message sticky we stayed away from using celebrities or adults. The evangelists of change were the children themselves because when adults succumb to inertia, its’ the children that can jolt them out of their bad habits. With this insight, a child-driven crusade was born with a simple sticky short hand that made these 3 habits easy to remember: HAATH, MUH, BUM BIMARI HOGI KAM (Fewer illnesses occur when you practice Hand, Mouth & Bum)