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.

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.