Chances are that even the
better travelled among us haven't put in a stop at Gunga, a village in the
Berasia taluka, near Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. It however figured in the
itinerary of Keith Weed, chief marketing and Communication Officer officer at
Unilever on a recent trip to India. It's a visit that has left Weed with a new
appreciation for the resilience of the Indian consumers and the primacy of
mobile phones in their lives.
He says, "In the village I visited, there were incredibly low income consumers — eight people living on less than a dollar a day. But they had a mobile. As we went to the backroom to look at the stove, they used the mobile as a torch to show me the way. We have always been talking about how TV is mass coverage. But as you know, in rural India there are media dark areas that are not mobile dark."
However, a mobile phone doubling up as a torch is more footnote than main event in Weed's visit. Among the principal reasons is a status check on one of his pet projects, launched with considerable fanfare at the Cannes Lions Festival in 2012. In a meeting with Brand Equity a few hours before the launch at Cannes, Weed spoke excitedly of his intention to toss back a glass of water from Mumbai's Powai lake on stage. The water would of course have been treated by one of Unilever's Pureit purifiers. While those plans got scuppered, Waterworks, a collaboration between Unilever, non profit organisation PSI and Facebook, generated a fair amount of excitement on launch. It was seen as one of the first attempts by a large multinational to harness the power of social networking for societal good.
Waterworks is a Facebook timeline application that allows users to make a daily contribution towards communities in dire need of potable water. Their donations will enable PSI's onground staff, the Waterworkers to educate the most deprived people in rural India about the importance of clean water and distribute Unilever's Pureit units. The payoff for the people who choose to help? The satisfaction of doing good. And perhaps an equally important motivation in an increasingly narcissistic and self obsessed age — photos of the families they helped will be posted to their Facebook profiles.
Eight months down the line Waterworks does not boast the impressive million plus numbers of other 'brand' pages on Facebook, with a modest 9,285 likes so far. Asked if this is as per his expectation, Weed explains, "It's still in beta testing. There are two ends we are working on. The Facebook engagement and making sure we deliver water into the hands of people who need it the most, in a cost effective way."
He admits there are lessons to be learned before the project scales up and that even its promotion on Facebook has been kept deliberately low key. With the initial target of 15,000 met, the tweaks are specifically in the area of getting the units to the most needy. A contemplative Weed says, "It was incredibly moving. You see people in rural India, struggling with some of the basic things. It makes me more determined to sort out a scalable model." However his visit also fills him with confidence. Of the 600 houses, 220 have Pureit units.
Weed says, "Watching the Waterworker take a photo of the person who received the unit and uploading it on Facebook and to have that appear on the page of someone in Europe or the US: this is the future of the world. The use of mobile is going to transform our lives and marketing." The Waterworks project ties in with one of Weed's obsessions. Unilever has been working to a stated objective of doubling its business while halving its environmental footprint and increasing its social impact. The first of these Weed admits is a fairly basic ambition, one that's probably shared by any good company. The second has a profound impact on marketing. Weed says, "We could have put together a plan with targets we knew how to achieve. But I don't think that would transform the business to the degree we are aspiring to."
