Lifebuoy Swasthya Chetna

The Lifebuoy Swasthya Chetna programme was initiated in 2002 as a rural health and
hygiene initiative in India.

In India, over 600,000 children under the age of five die annually from diarrhoea. Studies
have shown that almost half these deaths could have been prevented by simply washing
hands with soap.

In partnership with local government bodies, the Lifebuoy Swasthya Chetna programme
is designed to spread awareness about the importance of washing hands with soap. It also
promotes general hygiene in rural areas that are difficult to reach through usual marketing
campaigns such as television, press or in-store advertising and promotions.

Communication
Swasthya Chetna, which means 'Health Awakening', is a multi-phased activity that works
towards effecting hand washing behaviour change in rural communities. The main
message of the campaign is "Visibly clean is not really clean".

The campaign has three communication tasks:

• To establish the presence of germs, even on clean hands, through the use of a 'glow germ
demo kit' that has been developed by Unilever for use in Lifebuoy Swasthya Chetna. The
simple and powerful tool makes unseen germs visible.
• To establish the consequences of these hidden germs, which when ingested, can cause
stomach infections and diarrhoea, or be transferred to eyes causing painful eye infections,
or infecting wounds.
• To establish how current practice is not enough to fight these germs by using the glow
germ demo kit to demonstrate that washing with water is not enough, and that it is
necessary to wash hands with soap for germ protection.

Tools used to communicate the central Swasthya Chetna message are adapted according
to the specific audience.

Engagement
Lifebuoy teams visit each village several times, engaging all segments of the community
and ensuring the formation of local 'self-help communities' that can sustain the message.

School children, being initiators of change, make excellent ambassadors of

communication, provided they find it fun and engaging. The element of Lifebuoy
Swasthya Chetna that involves children focuses on fun, using stories, games, songs and
quizzes. Efforts are made to ensure that the learning does not fade over time.

Additionally, these visits also include a meeting with the Panchayat (village elders).
Covering 130 million people in 30,000 villages since 2002, the Lifebuoy Swasthya
Chetna programme has made its mark as the single largest private hygiene education
project in the world.

The Swasthya Chetna programme will be re-launched in 2009, and will cover even more
villages in India as part of the Lifebuoy brand's crusade.

Key project activities:

Lifebuoy Swasthya Chetna is a multiphase activity that works toward effecting hand
washing behavior change among the rural communities it touches. The central message of
the campaign is:

Visibly clean is not really clean.

The communication tasks were to:

Establish the presence of germs even on clean-looking hands, using a simple but
extremely powerful, low-cost demonstration tool called the “glow germ demo kit.”
Developed by Unilever for use in Swasthya Chetna, it brings to the target audience the
idea that hands are only truly clean if washed with soap.

Establish the consequences of these hidden germs on hands.

Background
The Lifebuoy Swasthya Chetna (“Health Awakening”) program began in 2002 as a rural
health and hygiene education initiative in India. The project was designed to spread
awareness about the
importance of washing hands with soap and to promote general hygiene in rural villages.
The program has reached more than 100 million people, and its teams have reached at
least 44,000 villages in rural India. Swasthya Chetna is one of the world’s largest self-
sustained and self-funded hygiene promotion projects.

Communicating the message to children:

School children are change initiators and, in this context, the program works with them to
take the messages home and into their communities. Children are also excellent
communicators if they find
the topic or activity fun and involving. The tools to communicate the central Swasthya
Chetna message are adapted according to the specific audience, and schools have proven
excellent entry points into communities. The element of Swasthya Chetna that involves
children focuses on how to position hygiene as fun and uses stories, games, songs and
quizzes.

Key factors to success of the program:

Continuous monitoring and evaluation is at the core of the program – each year, program
activities are evaluated on both awareness of hygiene moments and effective behavior
changes. Improvements
can be made to the subsequent year’s program to make it more effective in achieving its
goals.

Cost-effectiveness of the program – the cost per village is approximately £50 for the three
exposures, including implementation and development of the materials.

Commitment of the operating company – Swasthya Chetna is now central to what the
brand does in India, and the operating company (Hindustan Unilever Limited) has
invested more than US$5 million.

Unilever Values
Unilever’s mission is to add vitality to life. We meet everyday needs for nutrition,
hygiene, and personal care with brands that help people feel good, look good
and get more out of life.
As a multi-local multinational, Unilever aims to play its part in addressing global
environmental and social concerns through its own actions, and working in
partnership with stakeholders at local, national and international levels.

On April 7, 2006, on the occasion of World Health Day, the Department of Posts released
a special Lifebuoy 'Swasthya Chetna Postal Cover'. Lifebuoy, a leading soap brand from
Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL), the Indian subsidiary of Unilever, became India's first
brand to be featured on a postal cover. The Special Postal Cover was released in
recognition of the work done by Lifebuoy and HLL to increase awareness of health and
hygiene in rural India, through the Lifebuoy 'Swasthya Chetna' (LSC) initiative.

LSC was a five-year campaign launched in 2002 in eight states across India. The
objective of this program was to educate around 200 million people in rural and urban
areas about the importance of adopting good 'health and hygiene' practices. The program
aimed to debunk the misconception that 'visibly clean is safe clean'.
HLL's senior product manager for Lifebuoy, Harpreet Singh Tibb (Tibb) said, "People
believe that 'visible clean' is 'safe' clean and hence tend to overlook simple hygiene
practices such as washing hands with soap. But the fact is that there are invisible
pathogens, which are responsible for many infectious diseases. We hence aim to educate
people on the presence of invisible germs and raise concern on their consequences." 1

LSC also spread awareness about germs and their adverse impact on health, and how
proper 'health and hygiene' practices, such as bathing and washing hands with soap could
prevent diseases like diarrhea, the second largest cause of death among children in India.
The LSC program was implemented in various phases. In the initial phase, the company
representatives interacted with schoolchildren and key influencers in the community like
medical practitioners, Panchayat members, etc. People were educated through lectures,
Glo-germ demonstrations, use of visual aids such as flip charts, and quizzes.

The program also used media vehicles like cinema vans, wall paintings, weekly markets,
fairs and festivals. The program was later extended to the parents and other adults. The
messages on health and hygiene were reinforced through regular contact programs. HLL
also introduced a smaller bar (18 gram) of Lifebuoy soap priced at two rupees, to
encourage people with low incomes to use soap.
Finally, children and parents were recruited as volunteers to start health clubs that would
help sustain the initiative. HLL sought to involve the local community in this campaign at
all stages so that the beneficiaries saw this as their own initiative and felt a sense of
ownership. On the whole, HLL had committed US$ 5.4 million to fund this five year
campaign. By the end of 2005, HLL had covered over 17,000 villages, and planned to
cover an additional 10,000 villages in 2006.

According to HLL, LSC was not a philanthropic activity, but a marketing program with a
social benefit. HLL sought to grow the Lifebuoy brand in India by attracting those
consumers who never used soap. In the process, the company sought to bring about a
behavioral change by convincing people to use soaps more frequently, thus creating more
users for its brand.
The sales of Lifebuoy had increased by 20 percent in 2003-04, with strong sales observed
in the eight states covered under the program. In 2005, the Lifebuoy brand grew by 10
percent and strong growth of the brand was expected to continue in 2006. The program
also generated goodwill for the company among customers, the government, and the
media.
By the end of 2005, the campaign had touched 86 million rural consumers and registered
a 30 percent increase in their awareness of germs, 20 percent increase in understanding
the association of germs with diseases and an increase in current user base by 33 percent
compared to pre-campaign status in activity villages. 3
.

The case study helps in understanding the difference between a product and a brand. It
also enables to study the behavior of a product during various stages of its life cycle.
The current competitive marketing environment during the new millennium is forcing
managers to understand the needs of modern consumers and reevaluate the changing
opportunities and threats in an evolving global marketing place. The concept of
Product Life Cycle (PLC) since its inception in the early 1950s, gained significant
recognition as a tool for effective marketing strategy in understanding the behaviour of
product on sales, profits, 4P’s of marketing and consumer approval.

Since inception in late 19th century, Lifebuoy, was a nimble and good citizen brand of
India, reaching millions of rural customers with a promise of ‘health and hygiene’ as a
platform of its business. Its famous advertising jingle, tandurusti ki raksha karta hai
Lifebuoy… was so famous that it enabled the brand ‘Lifebuoy’ to be perceived as a
‘red carbolic soap’ for several decades. The brand passed through prolonged stages of
growth and maturity during most of the second half of 20th century and was faced with
a decline stage during early 21st century with sales falling at the rate of 15%–20% per
year. The downward trend of Lifebuoy carbolic soap sales made Hindustan Lever Ltd.,
to withdraw the product category during 2002 and rejuvenate the brand with prudent
marketing strategies by optimally utilising the brand image. This case study analyses
how Lifebuoy managed to extend the brand life cycle.