Summary
Dettol #Handwash challenge on TikTok
Challenge
India has a dirty track record at washing hands. Less than 36% of Indians wash their hands with soap and water before a meal. In rural India, this number drops to a mere 25%. Covid19 makes handwashing even more critical. Improving handwashing was key to India's and Dettol's fortunes - Clearly, unless Indians rapidly took up the habit of handwashing, the risk of Covid19 could not be mitigated. The pandemic posed the next level of challenge in Dettol's ambition too. With an explosion in the hygiene and protection category, there was an opportunity to drive deeper penetration of formats like soap and liquid handwash. Lifebuoy, the closest competitor was reducing the gap in key equity parameters, and this was an opportunity to gain equity. As the first line of defense against Covid19, handwashing needed to be a habit for all Indians, but its handwashing statistics are abysmal.
Objective
The objectives of the campaign were as follows: Objective 1 – To educate the majority of Indians on the right way to wash hands. - This was to be measured by the reach of the campaign. Objective 2 – Drive penetration gains for Dettol across handwash formats. - Increase penetration of Dettol Liquid handwash by 2 percentage points to breach the 10% mark. For context, the average growth in penetration for the last 2 years was 1.9 percentage points. - Increase penetration of Dettol Soap by 4 percentage points to breach the 40% mark. For context, the average growth in penetration for the last 2 years was -0.8 percentage points (indicating a drop in penetration) Objective 3 – Drive market share gains for Dettol across handwash formats. - Increase the combined market share of soap and liquid handwash by 2 percentage points.
Strategy
Our attempt to make handwashing a habit for India led us to the field of Behavioural Science, specifically to the seminal work on habit formation – The Power of Habit – by Charles Duhigg which states that habits are formed through a three-step neurological process called The Habit Loop. Positive rewards become triggers for future actions. In short, for a behaviour to become a habit, it must be rewarding. And for small-town and rural India, there is no bigger reward today than – the fame of virality on social media! An entire generation of India has jumped the technology diffusion curve thanks to the proliferation of mobile and internet. Over half a billion Indians are active on social media ranging from contentconsumption focused mainstream social platforms like Facebook and Instagram to snackable content-based apps that provided fame and fortune through their newly acquired habit of content-creation. Our Insight - For a behaviour to become a habit, it must be rewarding – like the fame of virality on social media. To make handwashing a habit, we made the 'fame of virality' its reward.
Data
India has a dirty track-record at washing hands - Less than 36% of Indians wash hands with soap and water before a meal. In rural India, this number drops to a mere 25%. Over 15% of rural Indians don't wash hands with soap and water after defecation! In March 2020, the World Health Organization declared Covid19 as a pandemic. As the world grappled with an unforeseen spread of disease, it was clear early on how the simple act of washing your hands was our first line-of-defence against the virus, especially in a populous nation like India where social distancing is often impracticable and mask-wearing suffers from tokenism. TikTok had over 200 million subscribers in India – largest anywhere in the world outside China. Notably, more than half of them were from rural and small-town India, earning less than Rs. 25,000 a month!
Solution
We turned to the breakout social medium that was fast becoming the number one choice for Indians – TikTok. Designed to be content focused it allows users to gain views without building a fanbase first. A one-stop shop that allows shooting, editing, effects, music, and upload with minimal effort. Indeed, TikTok provides validation and empowerment to India's new breed of content creators! With over 200 million subscribers in India – the largest anywhere in the world outside China. Half of them were from rural and small-town India, earning less than Rs. 25,000 a month! The most popular aspect of the app is TikTok Challenges. From lip-syncs to dances, the challenges are often seen as vain, funny, or silly, but are in fact, built on the habit loop! The cue/reminder – seeing a challenge video by a celebrity/influencer. The action/behaviour – responding to the challenge by making own video. The reward/benefit – the fame of virality. We made the correct way of handwashing the act to be replicated in TikTok challenges and launched the #HandwashChallenge. In doing so, we created perhaps the biggest influencer marketing program in the world! Dance is the second-most popular category of content on TikTok – so we created an audio track layover that incorporated the correct way of handwashing as a set of easy to replicate dance-moves and a rap song that played for the WHO-recommended correct duration of handwashing– 20 seconds. Popular celebrities and influential TikTokers like Tiger Shroff, Sunny Leone, Genelia D'Souze, Ritesh Deshmukh, and many others were the first to create their challenge videos. This ensured that we reached Indians before a growing pandemic could. Small towns and rural Indian Tiktokers responded to the challenge by creating their own videos. In the hope of going viral, they were making the ‘act' of handwashing
Results
The #HandWashChallenge went viral and in just four days had nearly 9 billion views. This is how the campaign delivered on the respective objectives – Objective 1 – To educate majority of Indians on the right way to wash hands. Result - The reach of the campaign surpassed all expectations. For perspective, the top three TikTok Challenges of 2019 in India and their video views statistics were – #2ofMe – 5.4 billion #MyJourney – 5.3 billion #ILoveMyIndia – 4.3 billion The more significant impact though, is from the more than 75 million unique user-generated videos generated as direct response to our idea. This number represents the number of times we got Indians to practice handwashing! This scale of response is unheard of across brand or unbranded initiatives across any digital platform. Objective 2 – Drive penetration gains for Dettol across handwash formats. - Target - Soap by 4 percentage-points to breach the 40% mark and Liquid handwash by 2 percentagepoints to breach the 10% mark. Results - Audiences exposed to the challenge had 15% higher brand awareness and 14% higher purchase intent for Dettol handwash products than unexposed audiences. This contributed to improved penetration - the liquid handwash saw over 150% increase in penetration and soap penetration breached the 40% mark rising by more than 5%. Rural Penetration for both soap and handwash grew handsomely – liquid handwash penetration growing faster than category! Objective 3 – Drive market share gains for Dettol across handwash formats. Result – Against the target of 2 percentage point increase, Dettol's combined market share in soaps and liquid handwash grew by 4 percentage points. Given India's success, Dettol rolled out geo-specific versions for countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
