As this is not a pharmaceutical product, there are no advertising restrictions. However the bigger issue has been the mindset of consumers and public alike in their lack of acknowledgement of the seriousness of the problem of infant mortality due to diarrhoea and pneumonia. What is more frustrating has been the inability to convince people that soap is the best weapon in this fight to save lives. A soap is treated as a hygiene tool and hand washing a good habit that everyone thinks they do. Overcoming this restriction was a far greater challenge than any other.

Every year 2 million children under 5 die from preventable infections like diarrhoea and pneumonia. What compounds this problem is that people underestimate two things, the magnitude of this problem and the simplicity of the solution – hand washing with soap. We needed to convince people that hand-washing with Lifebuoy could actually save children’s lives.

That’s why we adopted the village with the highest diarrhoeal incidence in India, ‘Thesgora’, to prove that hand-washing with soap can save children’s lives. Using the emotional angle of a child’s 5th birthday, we created a cause to ensure all the children of Thesgora reach 5.

We used an integrated approach led by a unique online film, Gondappa - the story of father so overcome with joy when the first time a child of his survives the age of 5, he decides to walk on his hands to seek God’s blessing.

This human-focused, positive story opened people's minds to such avoidable death and got us 25 million YouTube views and 16 million pledges. In Thesgora, as a result of our campaign, we saw a 36% reduction in the incidence of diarrhoea in children as hand-washing tripled. Globally 183 million households learnt hand washing habits.

This campaign was designed to run globally targeting citizens who believe that 2 million children dying every year, was 2 million too many:

Parents who can empathize with what it means to lose children to diarrhoea.

People from higher income segments who are unaware of the seriousness of the problem and have the potential to spread the message of hand-washing with soap.

The primary goal of the campaign was to Prove That Hand Washing with Soap Reduces Incidence of Diarrhea and to spread that critical message. To make this last we wanted to go beyond awareness and change hand-washing habits.

As ours was a 3 min 10 sec film extensive TV would be prohibitive. Digital media was the obvious choice but we had to ensure that people watched all 190 seconds as the call to action and Lifebuoy branding are revealed at the end of the video.

We used Lifebuoy’s owned channels (Facebook, YouTube, Website) and annotated the film with a “Share” or “Donate” button. With each ‘Share’ Lifebuoy contributed 1 unit of local currency and progress was visible to all via a ‘Children Reached’ ticker.

An edit was aired on prime time Indian TV soap, Balika Vadhu. Programming tie-ups with FM channels promoted the campaign on radio

Bollywood Superstar, Kajol, championed the cause for free and her video was also housed on Lifebuoy channels.

Mothers and children in Thesgora village received continuous education on correct hand-washing through flipcharts, Comic Books, Germ demonstration tools, Hand-washing stations and games and songs.

We saw 36% decrease in diarrhoeal incidence in Thesgora vs. the 5% seen in the control village which can be directly attributed to the on-ground handwash activation program.

The hand-washing rate tripled: the number of times children washing hands with soap before any meal moved from just once to 3 occasions per day.

The YouTube film Gondappa garnered 16 million views worldwide in a little over 8 months.

10 Million people pledged to support Help a Child Reach 5.

Globally we reached 183 million households teaching them healthy hand washing habits.

While we are unable to measure the impact of our campaign directly on child mortality until the release of the annual UNICEF figures later in 2014 indirectly, we measured it by looking at Lifebuoy sales growth against the category growth. Lifebuoy delivered almost double the year on year sales growth compared to the soap bar category.

We needed to demonstrate the power of hand-washing in preventing illness and wanted to show our seriousness in spreading the message. Rather than just air a commercial, we adopted Thesgora, a village with one of the highest rates of diarrhoea in India and committed to make it diarrhoea free.

‘Gondappa’, a 3min 10sec film, told the Lifebuoy mission in a deeply emotional way. It’s a story of a father so overcome with gratitude when his first child survives the age of 5 that he decides to walk on his hands to seek God’s blessing. We wanted to bring alive the sadness and futility of losing a child to an easily preventable illness and thereby provoke our audience to share the message.

Our integrated approach covered on-ground activities combined with digital mediums like Facebook and Youtube and conventional channels like PR, TV, in-serial programming and radio.

Every day more than 26,000 under 5 children die worldwide, from pneumonia and diarrhoea. More deaths than malaria, AIDS, and measles combined! What is both shocking and heartening to know is that these diseases can be easily prevented and lives saved. Simply hand washing with soap can reduce these deaths by 600,000 each year. However, worldwide, the observed rate of hand-washing with soap at critical moments range from 0 - 34% only. That’s why we needed to spread the message that hand washing with soap is critical to save lives of children under 5.