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, 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."
