Water is a universal human need. Another may be the urge to empathize and lend a hand. Our campaign insight stemmed directly from several facts. Almost the world over, the hunt for drinking water is left to women and girls. The scarcity of water often means walking miles a day to get it. It can be all-consuming in terms of time and energy. That leaves little opportunity for schooling, which in many developing nations is virtually the only way to get ahead. We know that here in the West, the majority of P&G products are purchased by female household decision makers. We needed to show them that buying Tide, Pantene, or Dawn would not only be securing the best products for their households, but heavily and positively impacting the lives of families like theirs.

We focused on 3 areas: First, online content to create action and social sharing. We traveled to the remote Saboba region of Northern Ghana to meet three mothers (all running their own businesses and households) and one woman disabled as a child by a waterborne illness who’s now spearheading the charge on water education in her community. Our films on Upworthy’s Facebook feed reached millions.

Second, we focused on educating consumers, working with Upworthy on articles and images celebrating women – enabled by technology and organizations like P&G – on the front lines for clean water.

Lastly, we leveraged global thought-leaders with huge followings for a coordinated #UpChat on Twitter, building involvement.

We launched the campaign on Facebook and Twitter on World Water Day in March 2017. Bichibia’s story, 2 articles, and #UpChat kicked it off, then we rolled out stories of Joana, Fusenia, Nnena, and 5

While our program is currently active, we continue to involve millions of Upworthy’s Facebook subscribers, with over 5 million unique views to date. Upworthy fans request socially relevant news rather than entertainment items, so their interest will carry a tangible effect on bringing clean water to communities who don’t have it. Combined with the social dialog from followers of global thought leaders, we are reaching an estimated 28 million more, each sharing P&G’s serious engagement with water issues. Our Twitter live event reached 4 million with over 1,000 social conversations in 156 countries of interested schoolchildren who will encourage parents to buy P&G products. As the P&G Program celebrates 12 Billion liters, we have 3 billion more liters to go to reach our goal of 15 Billion liters delivered by 2020. The Power of Clean is empowering women and giving them the opportunity to change the world for the better.