Lifebuoy: Chamki – The Girl From The Future [video]

Credits & Description:

Client: Unilever (Lifebuoy)
Product: Lifebuoy Hand Wash
Entrant: Mullenlowe Singapore, Singapore
Idea: Mullenlowe Singapore, Singapore
Pr: Mullenlowe Singapore, Singapore
Production: Offroad Films Mumbai, India
Editor: Oct 28 2015 12:00am
Executive Creative Director: Carlos Andres Rodriguez (MullenLowe SSP3 Bogota)
Executive Creative Director: Sagar Kapoor (Lowe Lintas, Mumbai)
Chief Strategy Officer: Ranjit Jathanna (MullenLowe Singapore)
Global Business Director: Vinay Vinayak (MullenLowe Singapore)
Unit Creative Director: Sarvesh Raikar (Lowe Lintas, Mumbai)
Associate Vice President: Russell John (Lowe Lintas, Mumbai)
Director / Director of Photography: Anand Gandhi (Offroad Films)
Executive Producer: Khalil Bachooali (Offroad Films)
Associate Producer: Fahad Pathan (Offroad Films)
Associate Producer: Garima Arora (Offroad Films)
Assistant Producer: Ambika Mehra (Offroad Films)
Director Of Photography: Shankar Raman (Offroad Films)
Director Of Photography: Avinash Arun (Offroad Films)
Director Of Photography: Jay Oza (Offroad Films)
Production Designer: Pooja  (Offroad Films)
1st Art Director: Naved Rizvi  (Offroad Films)
2nd Art Director / Casting Director: Rohini Devarajan (Offroad Films)
Director Assistant: Neel Pagedar (Offroad Films)
Casting Director: Tanu Malhotra  (Offroad Films)
Costume Stylist / Make up & Hair: Smriti Chauhan & Sandeep (Offroad Films)
Production Manager: Sudeep Chakravarty (Offroad Films)
Post-Production Producer: Luv Dhumal (Offroad Films)
Post-Production Supervisor: Yatin Vij (Offroad Films)
Music Director: Chandavarkar & Taylor (Offroad Films)
Sound Engineer: Gabor Erdelyi (Offroad Films)
Offline Editor: Sanyukta Kaza (Offroad Films)
Online Editor: Rohan Khokar  (Offroad Films)
Colourist: Swapnil Patole (Offroad Films)
PR Agency: Team GolinOpinion (GolinOpinion)
PR Agency: Team Salt PR (Salt PR)
Describe the campaign/entry:
For our message to cut across, we created a social experiment, with an expectant mother in a remote village in India. Our team spent weeks documenting her everyday (not revealing the real reason why we were covering her life) and making the film authentic and real.
We asked her dreams and aspirations for her child to be. Would it be a girl or a boy? The name, her description of her child, physical features etc. We then found a child that matched her description and set up the mother-to-be for a big surprise where she received a special message from her ‘future child’ thanking her for the various good things she did for her, along with the life-saving habit of handwashing at key moments during the first 28 days of her life. This child’s emotional message and the mother’s reaction were showcased in an exceptionally powerful piece of film content.
Execution:
We had to make sure that our message touched each every one of our audience. For that we…
• Targeted policy makers at the UN to influence the SDGs vote: We premiered ‘Future Child’ at a high-level event in New York during the UN General Assembly week.
• Took part in the opening of the 70th UN General Assembly, taking the opportunity to talk about the importance of neonatal hygiene to global policy makers.
• Moved swiftly to get the urban affluent to start paying attention to the message & evangelize it.
• Premiered the film amongst pregnant women. India’s top bloggers & the press who were addressed at the end of the screening, then took over.
• Reached the affected in media dark India - We took our message from our ‘FutureChild’ to hundreds of remote villages in media dark India through a 'Traveling Cinema.’
• The campaign went viral garnering an unprecedented PR reach of 890 million people, €1.1mn (Earned PR).
• Using Digital, Cinema, Direct to Home (DTH) the message was spread among 190million people.
• Through a first of a kind ‘Traveling Cinema’ reached 4,00,000 rural media dark people across 400 villages.
• The campaign got UN to amend SDG (Goal6.2) in April’16 and include a handwashing indicator to measure access to handwashing facilities.
• Marketing Guru David Aaker acknowledged HelpAChildReach5 campaign as world’s best branded social program ever
• Brand Equity scores reached highest ever in last3years.
• Protects effectively from germs” scores moved to highest ever.
• Increase in ‘suitable for family’. Increase in ‘brand I trust more than other brands’.
• 17%increase in ‘Lifebuoy cares for society (Digital Preview).
• Lifebuoy saw an increase in Volume Market Share by 60 bps at an all India level.
The Situation:
We created a powerful film to showcase that ‘The First 28 Days Can Help a Child Reach 5’. We had to bring under 5 deaths in the forefront of all discussions; and PR helped us achieve that popularity.
Our campaign created widespread impact, not just in India but resonated internationally despite the country specific nature of our creative. We got an unprecedented PR reach of 890 million people, €1.1mn (Earned PR).
This helped swing policy votes with the policy makers at United Nations, and got the world talking about the tragedy of child mortality amongst under 5s.
The Strategy:
To make REAL impact, our message had to appeal to 3 different audiences in a deeply emotional way:
1. Rural pregnant/new mothers who don’t think/know handwashing could prevent neonatal deaths.
2. Privileged class who could potentially evangelize on the role of hygiene in saving neonatal lives.
3. Policy makers who didn’t see handwashing (hygiene) as part of the Sustainable Development Goals.
We needed one voice to cut through these varying audiences. So our approach hinged on the insight that: ‘It’s difficult to ignore a request from a child, let alone, an unborn one.’

Synopsis (2017 cannes lions):
This paper shows how Lifebuoy, a health soap brand, successfully targeted United Nations (UN) policy makers with an emotional campaign about child mortality and neo-natal deaths in order to save the lives of children under 5. Every year two million children under five die from diarrhoea and pneumonia, 44% under the age of 28 days. Something easily preventable by the simple act of hand-washing with soap. Lifebuoy’s launched an innovative ‘Help a Child Reach 5’ movement - creating emotional cultural stories and social experiments to raise awareness about Under 5 deaths. Our Futurechild film featured an expectant rural mother in India talking about her hopes for her child receiving a testimonial from her 'future child' thanking her for the care she had taken during the crucial first few days of life. The campaign was presented at UN summits and to government representatives, launched online and broadcast in media dark regions in India by means of a ‘Travelling Cinema’.With media spend of just $3.5million, the campaign empowered millions of people worldwide to help every child reach the age of five, through a collective commitment to spread and share the Lifebuoy hand-washing cause. Thereby delivering against our 3 objectives: Attention: - We generated 54 million global YouTube views across our films, with share rates double benchmarks.- Futurechild was the 5th most watched YouTube video in India in 2015, with a PR reach of 890 million worldwide.Action. - We reduced disease and child deaths: Across the 3 years of our campaign India child mortality rates dropped by 214,000. Whilst we cannot directly attribute all of these lives saved, we can surmise that HACR5 was instrumental given the massive response to our campaign.- We garnered external Donor Support: By showcasing the success of Lifebuoy’s program globally to social investment funds and government aid agencies, Lifebuoy has won over $20 million of external funding from key donors to run its branded hand washing programs in key D&E geographies.- This enabled us to fund a Global Roll Out: Villages have been adopted across 14 countries with external partners recruited across Asia and Africa. Moreover, large scale programs are being deployed in 24 countries. Our initiative of teaching hand-washing extended to over 337 million people across the globe with India as the lead country.Advocacy: - Effective messaging, achieved urban groundswell and influenced the UN SDG goals. HACR5 saw the United Nations to include a hand-washing as indicator in Sustainable Development Goals 2030. This is significant as measuring it means it will actually be implementedThe evolution of our strategy marks a new paradigm for a FMCG branded social good programme, now co-run with social and government organisations, which is a win-win-win for the public health sector, the private sector and the most vulnerable populations of the world. This new model is a breakthrough step in helping Lifebuoy reach 1 billion people with its hand washing behaviour change programme, which would be impossible for the brand or Unilever resources alone.