Nihar’s key brand equity is purity. In Rural Bihar, many people associate purity with hygiene. Many of these women are seeking purity in life (both existential and spiritual) to be fulfilled. To that end, we created the Nihar Purity Drive, a campaign to bring purity to every community and every individual. In the home, the drivers of purity are the women, while in the community the drivers are the village seniors and leaders. To reach both groups, we established community meetings in many of Bihar’s villages dedicated solely to the subject of purity. In each village we led – with trained staff – meetings for both the top village leaders, as well as for groups of influential women. We held special rallies where villagers changed purity slogans. And we taught younger women of the communities how to take up the cause for themselves, establishing continuance of the program after we’d left.

Through our outreach efforts, we connected emotionally with women in many of Bihar’s 45,000 villages, generating affinity for the brand. Our meetings – some of which had 200 to 300 households represented – received full community participation and revolutionized the idea of purity throughout the province. By the end of the campaign, Nihar’s already dominant market share increased 3%.