Lifebuoy: Saving lives with soap

Saji Abraham and Pooja Rawat
Warc Prize
Longlisted, 2013
 
 

   Title: Lifebuoy: Saving lives with soap

   Author(s): Saji Abraham and Pooja Rawat
   Source: Warc Prize
   Issue: Longlisted, 2013
 

Lifebuoy: Saving lives with soap

Saji Abraham and Pooja Rawat

Lowe Lintas & Partners, Mumbai

Campaign details

Brand owner: Unilever

Agency: Lowe Lintas & Partners, Mumbai
Brand: Lifebuoy
Country: Kenya, Nigeria, India, Indonesia
Industry: Public health
Media budget (USD): $500k - $1 million
Channels used: Events and experiential, Internet - display, Internet - general, Internet - microsites, widgets, Mobile and apps,
Newspapers, Online video, Outdoor, out-of-home, Public relations, Radio, Social media, Television

Executive summary

The world's largest hygiene and cleansing brand, Lifebuoy, wanted to address the problem of two diseases afflicting the
world's poorest children, namely pneumonia and diarrhoea, which together account for an estimated 2.1 million child deaths
every year.

The brand's marketers believed that a practice, which could save over 600,000 lives per year, was readily available to every
household – hand-washing with soap 1. The brand's aim was thus two-fold: create awareness about the importance of hand
washing with soap and ensure that people adopted this simple act as a habit.

This case study outlines how Lifebuoy's approach used a 'pledge' as an expression of commitment. It describes how the
Global Hand washing Day Campaign (GHD) ensured participation by encouraging people to 'Pledge to save a life'. It
generated 41 million 'pledges' worldwide. Category sales showed significant uplifts post-campaign, with a disproportionate
increase in Lifebuoy sales. Lifebuoy estimates that 3,084 children under five lived to see their fifth birthday in four countries as
a result of GHD 2011.

Campaign background

Background:

Downloaded from warc.com

2 

 
 

Every year, it is estimated that 2.1 million children across the world do not reach the age of five due to pneumonia and
diarrhoea. These diseases account for 29% of deaths of children under five2. Once a child gets sick in some countries, there
is only a bleak hope of survival due to the lack of life-saving measures available. What is both shocking and heartening to
know is that these diseases can be easily prevented. An intervention is readily available in every household – the use of
soap; The simple act of washing hands with soap and water, and not water alone, is proven to be the most cost-effective
health interventions which can reduce these deaths by 1 million each year - from diarrhoea by 47% and from acute respiratory
infections by 25%3.

Challenge: Establish Handwashing with soap as a Lifesaver

Germs are invisible so it's impossible to see the difference between washing off visible dirt with water and washing hands with
soap and water which washes off harmful bacteria as well. This lack of visible proof makes handwashing with soap seem
unnecessary.

Our strategic communication challenge was to spread the word about the seriousness of the problem and convince people
that a simple intervention of hand washing with soap and water can save their child's life.

Geographical reach4:

India: bears the greatest brunt of diarrhoea and pneumonia cases, with the total death toll in 2010 exceeding 600,000.

Nigeria: ranks 2nd worldwide for under-five deaths due to diarrhoea and pneumonia, estimated at 241,000 deaths in 2010.

Kenya: On average, 32,000 deaths amongst under-fives occur annually due to diarrhoea and pneumonia.

Indonesia: Approximately 30,000 under-fives die every year due to pneumonia and diarrhoea.

Objectives & KPIs:

Note: 'Adopting Thesgora' is yearlong campaign that was launched digitally on 18 February 2013. Only the objective of reach
can be attributed to this.

Primary Objective: Saving Lives

All communication is geared towards saving lives. The trouble with measuring child mortality, however, is that it is influenced
by various factors, which vary from year to year. Hence, no figure could be fixed prior to the campaign.

Objective 2: Delivering reach and awareness

Greater awareness would increase the chances of the message spreading and lives being saved. We would measure this by
reach of on-ground and online activities that must show an improvement year on year.

Downloaded from warc.com

3 

 
 

Objective 3: Increasing sales in the soap bar category

To validate if people actually started washing hands with soap, we would measure volumes sales for the soap category in the
quarter immediately following GHD (Quarter 4). The target was to exceed sales of Quarter 3 of the same year (pre-campaign).

TARGET: TOILET SOAP CATEGORY VOLUME SALES5

Objective 4: Ensuring Lifebuoy Brand association

To relate impact with Lifebuoy, we would measure sales volume of Lifebuoy versus the soap bar category, in Quarter 4 over
Quarter 3. This would prove campaign efficacy as it shows that people have acted as a result of our Lifebuoy GHD campaign.

Insight and strategy

Target Audience:

To maximize impact on lives of children under-five years, we had three key audiences:

l School children: They are not just passive recipients of information and can be important agents of change. When
involved, they take responsibility for the act, for themselves and for their younger siblings to whom they may also be care-
givers.
l Parents: as the ones to spread the message and to model habits at home as they could teach the habit to their young
children.
l Adults from higher income segments: In 2013 we expanded our audience to include people who are currently
unaware of the seriousness of the problem and not directly affected by these problems. We realised that they have the
potential to encourage handwashing with soap amongst their helps who may be vulnerable to such diseases.

Research:

While searching for a distinct direction to impact handwashing behavior, we found two particularly relevant case studies:

l Automobile drivers who committed to riding the bus twice a week were significantly more likely to ride the bus afterwards

Downloaded from warc.com

4 

 
 

than those who didn't make such a commitment. (Bachmana & Katzeva 1982)
l Students who committed, both as individuals, and as members of a college dormitory, to recycling paper, recycled more
paper than a control group; when these commitments were removed, those students who made individual-level
commitments continued to recycle more. (Wang & Katzev 1990).

Key insight

We landed on the insight of creating a Commitment. Our campaigns would not just empower people with information but
make them commit publicly, so they felt an obligation and responsibility – personally and collectively, towards their own lives
and those of others around them.

Creative strategy

Commitment we creatively translated as a Pledge. 'Pledge', the center point of all our activities, was the important participatory
component of our campaigns henceforth.

THE GLOBAL HANDWASHING DAY6 CAMPAIGN

GHD was created to spread awareness about handwashing with soap to reduce under-five child mortality by two-thirds by
2015.

Lifebuoy leveraged this platform to impact lives by encouraging people to 'Pledge to save a life'. A pledge would give
authority to mothers to enforce handwashing with soap and pester power to kids to follow up on their pledges. To make the
pledge tangible, we aimed at the critical moments for handwashing with soap (before handling food and after the toilet).

THESGORA CAMPAIGN7

Lifebuoy needed to prove the efficacy of handwashing with soap in saving lives – a fact which people did not seem to believe.
Thus was born the idea of adopting a village. Thesgora is a village in Madhya Pradesh, India that has the highest proportion
of children with diarrhoea (15%). Through this campaign, Lifebuoy will ensure that every child in the village celebrates their 5th
birthday till 2015 by ensuring that they wash hands with soap on all critical occasions.

The central thought, 'Pledge to help a child reach 5' would actively involve people in ensuring that they take note of the
issue and spread the message to others around them.

Implementation

Execution strategy

We had to create maximum reach and impact within a limited time and budget, which made the choice of media channels
extremely important.

GHD: Mass awareness channels, such as TV, print, radio and OOH were used to create general awareness of the event. To
make these channels work harder, we used a popular local celebrity in most countries to deliver the message. TV and radio
spoke directly to children in an engaging manner educating them about the five critical occasions for handwashing with soap.
All channels encouraged people to pledge through SMS or on the Lifebuoy GHD Facebook page. This, the first phase, began
20 days before GHD.
Downloaded from warc.com
5 

 
 

Press and outdoor advertisements encouraging people to pledge – Nigeria & Indonesia respectively

For the second and the most important phase, we zeroed in on channels that were most effective and authoritative in
delivering the message of washing hands with soap. We chose public schools where a majority of such vulnerable children
go to study. On the Global Handwashing Day (October 15), an annual event is conducted by Lifebuoy employee-turned-
volunteers, NGOs and school teachers to engage directly with children and teach them about the importance of washing
hands with soap. Some countries invited the Health Minister, Mayors and celebrity moms to heighten impact. At the end of the
day, children were encouraged to take the pledge and propagate this behavior in their homes.

A comic book with 5 good characters and one evil character (germs) was created to simply the message for children. These
were used as engagement aids in schools.

Downloaded from warc.com

6 

 
 

GHD engagement activity at schools

Key opinion formers who supported the live event and/or the cause made their support known on their blogs and in
newspapers thus garnering immense PR and extending the life of the GHD campaign.

Adopting Thesgora: Lifebuoy has adopted a village to prove the efficacy of handwashing with soap – a unique channel to
deliver a conclusive, irrefutable message.

In addition, to ensure that this message is highlighted especially with the people who were currently unaware of the magnitude
of the problem, a 3-minute film8 about the plight of Thesgora was created and uploaded on Facebook through team members.
If the film cut ice with the audience, we expected that they would share the message with others. The film went live on
Facebook9 for the first time on 18th February 2013.

Media costs:

The total cost of media for the 4 countries for GHD (excluding production budgets) was USD 1.57 million in 2011 and USD
1.23 million in 201210.

Adopting Thesgora was activated digitally through Facebook and hence incurred no media costs in the period of the case.

Performance against objectives

Primary Objective: Saving lives11

Downloaded from warc.com

7 

 
 

Please see after Objective 4

Objective 2: Reach and awareness delivered

The objective was to empower the maximum number of people with the message of washing hands with soap and both our
campaigns have managed to exceed targets.

i) World Records were set12

Kenya: 53,873 pupils from 60 primary schools around Nairobi washed their hands at exactly 10:30am thus creating a
Guinness world record for the highest number of children handwashing simultaneously at multiple locations.

Nigeria: Lifebuoy created a platform for over 37,809 school children to wash hands simultaneously in a single location -
at the Tafawa Balewa Square, Lagos thus creating a Guinness World record.

ii) Millions of people 'Pledged to save a life'

A total 41.3 million pledges were collected in 2011-12 in the 32 Lifebuoy countries that activated the Global Handwashing Day.
This is more than the total population of Argentina!

aThe total on-ground reach declined in 2012 due to decline in number of participating countries and other countries which

lacked budgets to promote the campaign.

In 2011 alone, 25 million people pledged to wash hands with soap, the number increasing almost 10 folds from 2010. In the
four countries, we reached a total of 23.6 million people over the 2 year GHD period.13

Downloaded from warc.com

8 

 
 

iii) A million people touched in 10 days

'Thesgora' which was activated online on 18th February 2013 saw 67,239 views in the first 2 days, and reached 99,686
views by March 1st.

The film garnered online and offline PR almost instantly as many newspapers and bloggers took notice, thereby increasing its
reach.

Objective 3: Increased sales of the soap bar category14

Sales (volume) impact of the campaign in the months immediately preceding and following GHD activities (Q3 and Q4
respectively) showed that sales grew post-campaign, a clear increase in the incidence of handwashing. This proved that
driving reach and consumer participation actually encouraged people to act.

This is despite the fact that usually with the onset of winter, sales in the category habitually decline in Q4.

Downloaded from warc.com

9 

 
 

Objective 4: Lifebuoy Brand association ensured

How do we know that it was Lifebuoy's campaign for awareness that made the difference?

Sales effect: Lifebuoy grew faster than the soap bar category15

This was a key metric for measuring the success of the campaign. In Q4, the months following GHD activities, Lifebuoy volume
outperformed the previous quarter's sales AND outperformed the category. This demonstrates the efficacy of the campaign as
people associated Lifebuoy with the GHD handwashing message and hence bought more Lifebuoy versus competition.

Primary Objective: Saving lives

We played a small part in saving lives. In just the last quarter of 2011, as a result of GHD 2011 (October) campaign, we have
estimated to have saved the lives of 3,084 under-five children in our top four markets16. We estimate the campaign for 2011-
2012 will outperform these figures, as it has done so in all the objectives above.

# Source: Millward Brown

We also delivered a substantial benefit to society17 with a saving of $4.4million in treatment and societal costs based on an
average of $1419 per life saved18. This is an underestimate of the true impact as this figure only relates to direct medical costs
and lost productivity of caregivers rather than the primary benefit in economic terms which is the impact of lost productivity due
to premature death.

Downloaded from warc.com

10
 

 
 

The 'value-of-statistical-life-saved', or the benefit from saving a child's life incorporating lost productivity due mortality, is
estimated at over $23,000 per life saved19. 3084 lives has the potential to deliver, through reduced treatment costs and
economic impact from lost productivity due to mortality, over $70 million to society. With campaign spend of $1.57 million
(2011), only 60 lives would need to be saved to cover the cost of the campaign rather than the 3084 realised20. In terms of a
societal return on marketing investment, the campaign delivered $45 to society for every $1 invested in the Lifebuoy GHD
campaign.

Innovations and lessons learned

Two quotes establish the complete meaning of innovation for us:

"I have always been driven to buck the system, to innovate, to take things beyond where they've been." Sam Walton, Founder
of Wal-Mart.

"Innovation is the process of turning ideas into manufacturable and marketable form." Watts Humprey, Father of Software
Quality.

How have we bucked the system and how have we done it in a commercially viable way:

Saving lives with soap, the Lifebuoy way. Soap is proven to be the simplest and the most cost-effective intervention to
prevent diarrhea and pneumonia - a known fact in the social fraternity but one that has had limited success. While it is amply
clear that people need to be educated, behavior change is seldom easy as behavior change programs are often investment
intensive and require constant intervention making them unsustainable. We've made behavior change mainstream, with limited
budgets and minimal monitoring by using innovative approaches in three major areas of the campaign:

l Insight: To arrive at the insight of commitment, we looked at behavior change theories but to our disappointment, they
required a staggered intervention over longer periods of time and we had but one day to make this possible. We needed
to plant a powerful seed that would germinate and flower on its own rather than need constant tending. After much
painstaking research, cases showed us an alternative route to behavior change based on people feeling a high degree of
involvement and responsibility towards the act. That is exactly how we used the idea of 'pledging'. Pledging, while not a
new concept, is one that usually encourages people to pledge money towards a social cause. We added newness by
encouraging people to 'Pledge to save a life' publicly which eventually made behavior change a self-starter.
l Execution vehicles: To achieve extensive reach with limited budgets, during GHD, employees turned volunteers for the
day to teach children the importance of handwashing with soap. To prove the efficacy of soap, instead of regular demos
and traditional communication, Lifebuoy has adopted all children in a village with the highest rate of diarrhea. Rarely has
a village been used as a communication vehicle, and that too, by a for-profit brand that is putting both its reputation and
the success of the cause at stake. The brand created channels where none existed, that made sense for business and

Downloaded from warc.com

11
 

 
 

the success of the cause.

l Measuring success: We measured the success of the GHD campaign not only by the traditional approach of reach but
also by sales volumes of the category and the brand and by ensuring that consumers associated us unmistakably with
the effort. These results were made crucial to the success of the campaign because as much as we'd like not to highlight
this, the cause of saving lives had to make business sense for the brand. Not because we are looking for profit in every
venture but otherwise we, a responsible for-profit FMCG brand, could not be in this game of saving lives for much longer.
Our program proved commercially viable soon enough, the reason why it is able to stand on its feet and reach millions
more people every year. Ironic as it may seem, profit is the fuel for making a significant impact on child mortality.

Learnings:

Creating brand love: We realised that one way to create brand love amongst even people who use products three times our
price and consider Lifebuoy as a cheap brand that their grandparents used, is to put your money where your heart is. Our
heart has been in saving lives, but this we did not focus on this actively before 2008.

A campaign for saving lives began in 2008 and by doing this passionately and consistently for the past 5 years, we seem to be
finally coming around to garnering brand love – something that we have been vying and trying for a long time. Little did we
know that it would come to us in the most surprising way.

Saving Lives is for everyone: Milton Friedman states that the social purpose of brands is to earn profit. Through these
campaigns, we proved that even a social purpose by a for-profit brand can earn profit and hence the two can be achieved
successfully in parallel. A social cause, such as this one, not only adds profit to the brand but also give it significant
competitive advantage and is sustainable. This has therefore not remained a one-off program; saving lives is now mainstream
to the brand.

Footnotes

1. Source: Unicef, 2010 estimate

2. Source: Unicef, 2010 estimate
3. WHO: Planners Guide to Handwashing
http://www.who.int/gpsc/events/2008/Global_Handwashing_Day_Planners_Guide.pdf
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/well/resources/fact-sheets/fact-sheets-htm/Handwashing.htm
4. Source: all data - Unicef, 2010 estimates
5. Source: AC Nielsen; For India, we have averaged Q3 2012 figures to make a direct comparison.
6. Global Handwashing Day (GHD)6 was first initiated in 2008 on October 15 by Lifebuoy with the Public Private
Partnership for Handwashing by a public-private partnership for Handwashing (PPPHW). UN now recognizes October 15
as the Global Handwashing Day.

Downloaded from warc.com

12
 

 
 

7. http://www.unilever.com/brands-in-action/detail/Lifebuoy-adopts-Indian-village/346109/
8. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF7oU_YSbBQ
9. https://www.facebook.com/lifebuoy/app_108702102646738
10. Source: Unilever
11. While our primary objective was to save lives, the results of the secondary objectives demonstrate how we achieved it.
Therefore the results of the primary objective have been shown at the end of the section.
12. Source: Guinness Book of World records
13. Source: Unilever internal data
14. source: AC Nielsen
15. Source: AC Nielsen
16. Note: Other partners of PPPHW (GHD) such as Dettol, Protex and Safeguard conducted school programs with children
and some deployed mass media channels for awareness during the same time. But as seen from the sales results of
Lifebuoy vs. the category, Lifebuoy was far more effective.
All calculations based on CHERG & UNICEF data. No calculations can be made towards this end for 2012 as there is no
public health data available yet.
Note on data calculations: Since handwashing with soap is not the only life-saving intervention with respect to pneumonia
and diarrhea, we have applied UNICEF's correlations to estimate the impacts. Unicef estimate that washing hands with
soap is responsible for at least 47% of the children saved from diarrhea and 25% saved from pneumonia per year (WELL
Fact Sheet at http://www.lboro.ac.uk/well/resources/fact-sheets/factsheets-htm/Handwashing.htm). The diarrhea and
pneumonia percentage for 2011 is calculated by taking the average of 2008-10 diarrhea and pneumonia % as per
CHERG. Reduction in mortality over 2010 is calculated on this basis.
We've deduced the reduction attributed to Lifebuoy for Q4 only of 2011, after the GHD activities of 2011.
2012 figures are not available yet.
17. There is extensive published data of the cost effectiveness of prevention methods for diseases in developing worlds.
Effectiveness is measured in natural units (deaths averted and years of life saved) and in disability-adjusted life years
(DALYs), a composite measure that combines years lived with disability and years lost to premature death in a single
metric. There is relatively little data published on the benefits of lives saved and DALYs through reduced treatment costs
and the societal savings from lost productivity due to morality. Therefore estimates of the benefit of vaccines have been
used as a proxy for determining the benefit of saving a child's life through handwashing.
18. Source: Economic Costs of Rotavirus Gastroenteritis and Cost-Effectiveness of Vaccination in Developing Countries.
Quantifying the impact of saving a child's life from diarrhoea or pneumonia, and the benefit of intervention, in the
developing world is restricted by to data limitations. The cost of a life saved in a low income country is available for
diarrhoea only; this has been used as an estimate for those lives saved from pneumonia.
19. Source: Economic Benefits During The 'Decade Of Vaccines' Include Treatment Savings, Gains In Labor Productivity.
This study estimates both the short- and long-term economic benefits from the introduction and increased use of six
vaccines in seventy-two of the world's poorest countries from 2011 to 2020. It is the first study to present the economic
benefits of vaccines by using the value-of-statistical- life approach for diseases that primarily affect children under age
five in developing countries.
20. Campaign Cost = $1.4million; 59 lives at $23,625 = $1.4million

Downloaded from warc.com

13
 

 
 

© Copyright Warc 2013

Warc Ltd.
85 Newman Street, London, United Kingdom, W1T 3EU
Tel: +44 (0)20 7467 8100, Fax: +(0)20 7467 8101

www.warc.com

All rights reserved including database rights. This electronic file is for the personal use of authorised users based at the subscribing company's office location. It may not be reproduced, posted on intranets, extranets
or the internet, e-mailed, archived or shared electronically either within the purchaser’s organisation or externally without express written permission from Warc.

Downloaded from warc.com

14