Adopt-a-pothole is a project by Apollo Tyres for the road safety, to engage and empower people to fix their roads, one pot hole at a time.

Potholes were projected as lovable stray pets who needed someone to care for them. Through the adopt-a-pothole website, citizens could upload, adopt and share their pet potholes and if they could get the requisite number of tweets or posts from friends on social media, Apollo would fix the pothole for them and the fixed pothole would always bear the name of the adopter.

Apollo through this activity managed to create goodwill among consumers and showed them how committed they were to their YOU-FIRST Philosophy.

The Adopt-a-pothole initiative began in the Gurgaon area, a suburb next to Delhi and is soon going national in a big way. The response in social media has been phenomenal, given that the conversation spread across India for an initiative in Gurgaon. Uninitiated inquiries from journos who took the effort to cover the campaign has been remarkable, with almost all major dailies covering it. For a campaign only two months old the feedback has been huge. What’s more, all of this response has been generated through a media spend of less than Rs. 50,000 (around 700 Euros only)

Adopt a pothole is an activity that projects these potholes as stray pets that need love and care and invites people to adopt them and pay for their upkeep in digital currency.

So a few Facebook posts and tweets from 25 friends would get Apollo to fix the pothole and leave a little message on your fixed pet. Making sure your name and your deed were immortalized for the days to come.

If every citizen could adopt one pothole and get people talking, we were pretty sure we would fix all the potholes in the city.

Soon social media was abuzz with conversations about how a friend had adopted a pothole and was calling out for 25 supporters to get it fixed. Potholes that got fixed, got posted on social media with proud doting parents next to their little piece of road. The graffitis themselves spread the word acting as non-traditional media for people to get attention and this generated more traffic to the adopt-a-pothole website. The roads in Gurgaon, one of urban India’s bustling cities are looking a little more pothole free and have some bright patches that you can smoothly drive over.