We have heard from everyone now that content is king, but context is everything.

Well, here’s a story of a brand that reimagined an unlikely medium and pitched in an unheard context to help transform the lives of a neglected majority in India

What?

Harpic made toilets a part of marriage conversations!

Building and maintaining toilets isn’t a necessity for Indians. Of the estimated 2.3 billion people in the world who do not have access to toilets, more than one-third live in India.

Lack of toilets was hurting India’s #1 toilet cleaner brand - Harpic.

Harpic enjoys a healthy urban penetration of 38.9% and leads the ‘toilet and bathroom cleaners’ category. The obvious next frontier for growth for Harpic is rural and small-town India - where the category penetration stood at a mere 4.7%.

What good is a superior toilet cleaner, when there ARE NO toilets to be cleaned?

Our task?

Not just brand growth, not even category creation!

Harpic had the gargantuan task of accelerating the adoption of toilets amongst the masses of rural India

The government had been showing intent in tackling the issue and had announced the Clean India Mission in 2014 - its flagship program for achieving sanitation goals. But the rational reasons for building toilets at home was just not enough

Extra space needed for the new structure, productive time spent in the process of subsidy and supervision, labour of the family and additional funds – toilets were an investment and this investment was being deferred.

Why?

This was happening because when it comes to spending money - Indians surprisingly, will prioritize luxuries over necessities BECAUSE LUXURIES SIGNAL STATUS. Luxuries like an extra room, a television, new motorcycle or even a mobile phone were prioritised over toilets

Our Opportunity

The great Indian wedding is the ultimate display of family’s status.

These new relations between two families is an opportunity to enhance as well as show-off status.

Interestingly, this mindset spans socio-economic classes! The rich as well as the poor, desire alliances that match their status in society.

This hunt for status begins with matrimonial ads.

Each word in these ads are loaded with status connotations - education, profession, salary and physical appearance

We made toilets a status symbol by implanting them amongst other status words in matrimonial ads.

We tied up with the largest read Hindi daily in the worst affected regions, Dainik Jagran, and launched a special matrimonial ad. Seekers could use and advertise for free if they added merely 5 extra words – Home Must Have Clean Toilet.

For the first time ever, people in small towns and villages could use the ad to express their demand for a clean toilet.

Results

Over 18.86 million new toilets built in key states

Till after a year of the campaign, penetration in key states grew by a CAGR of 103.5% (Jharkhand), 52.2% (Bihar) and 88.6% (Uttar Pradesh)