Unilever’s hygiene soap Lifebuoy has been fighting germs and saving lives for decades. The brand’s social mission program #HelpAChildReach5 has reached 458 million people so far making this one of the largest handwashing behaviour change programs in the world. But despite ongoing efforts, it’s an uphill task. Close to 5.6 million children under the age of 5 die every year and around 2.6 million children die in the first 28 days of life. Diarrhoea and Pneumonia are still the leading causes of these deaths and are preventable by inculcating the simple habit of handwashing. In rural India, where the education is most needed, certain challenges make it difficult to target mothers with crucial hygiene information.

Objective #1: To reach mothers at scale in deep rural areas with lifesaving hygiene information that will drive real behaviour change.

Objective #2: Share this information with mothers in a convenient, relevant and engaging manner.

Lifebuoy created a voice based service called ‘Mobile Doctarni’. This service provided free health advice on infant and child health direct to the mobile. The aim was to make ‘Mobile Doctarni’ the family doctor accessible to mothers over the phone. It used IVR technology to reach out to women with health and hygiene information to impact their hand washing behaviour at key occasions. ‘Mobile Doctarni’ was well versed with local myths and as an authority figure helped break myths to drive behaviour change. The mobile program targeted mothers depending on their current stage of pregnancy/child’s age. A pregnant woman would get information on birth preparedness, a new mother on umbilical cord care, a mother of school going children would get information on germ transmission.

There are multiple challenges in reaching rural mothers. Firstly around 50% of rural India has no access to TV. On ground programs help disseminate information only so far. Secondly these are young mostly uneducated mothers with limited knowledge on childcare. This woman is bound by the walls and traditions of her house and doesn’t step out much. Information often gets filtered through the sieves of other family members. The authority figure is the mother-in-law who is uneducated and steeped in old ways. Lastly with 1 government doctor serving an approximate population of 11,000 which is 10X more than what is recommended by WHO, credible and timely health information seldom reaches mothers. Lifebuoy had to give mothers access to lifesaving information through the ultimate authority on childcare and thus Mobile Doctarni was created. Also given high mobile penetration in rural areas, the platform helped overcome the various operational challenges.

We implemented the program in Eastern UP, a region with one of the highest infant mortality rates and poor health infrastructure. East UP is an established media dark region but as a state, it has the most number of mobile subscribers in India. ‘Mobile Doctarni’ was promoted on Unilever’s existing mobile platform which helped reach rural mothers. Women enrolled in the program, by giving a ‘missed call’ to a number. They would start receiving targeted messages that sought to identify their life stage so that health advice could be customised for them. The mobile program was developed for new mothers and mothers of school going kids. The content was tailored to the lifestage of the mother and that made the program unique. Mobile Doctarni became the trusted, credible woman who educated mothers in simple Hindi and most importantly in a warm, reassuring and relatable manner.

• Received a total of 2.3 Mn calls and had about 1.1 Mn unique users.

• On an average an IVR has a conversion rate of 5% but ‘Mobile Doctarni’ has a conversion rate of 23%, showing high need for a heath based mobile service.

• Close to 1,886 hours of content was heard.

• Average listenership was high, with more than 80% mothers listening to more than 60 sec of content.

• Drove real behaviour change with mothers exposed to the campaign increasing handwashing with soap by 1 occasion every day.

• The impact and cost-effectiveness superseded our on ground program. An on-ground activation usually reaches a maximum of 300 headcount per day but with the ‘Mobile Doctarni’ program we received close to 3000 missed calls a day making the impact 10X.