By now most Pakistanis are familiar with the Surf Excel advertising campaign that has a child running around trying to do something nice for his grandmother and getting his clothes dirty in the process. What they may not be aware of is how this advertisement is representative of Unilever’s approach: finding synergies between the company’s brand management and social responsibility strategies.
Executives affiliated with Surf Excel’s brand management say that the Unilever has tried to position the brand as being associated with the learning process of children, and promoting the idea that a child’s education should be a higher priority than keeping their clothes clean.
Such an approach is obviously beneficial for business: the more people need to wash their clothes, the more they are likely to use laundry detergents like Surf Excel. Yet Unilever appears to be taking its approach one step further: using the emphasis on education as a defining strategy for its social responsibility activities.
When the country was hit by the most devastating floods in seventy years during the summer of 2010, Unilever mobilised its Surf Excel team to respond. The team, in turn, chose to integrate their brand image into their flood relief campaign — responding to the fact that many schools shut down during the flood and never re-opened, the Surf Excel team created a campaign to help rebuild and rehabilitate schools in some of the worst-affected districts.
Thus came ‘Tools for Schools’ a campaign that involved the Surf Excel team going out to ten cities across Pakistan and getting school children to participate in making classroom equipment – hence the term ‘tools’ – for schools in three districts: Rahimyar Khan, Muzaffargarh and Ghotki.
Unilever provided all of the raw materials, involving school children only in preparation activities like painting desks, etc. The goal, say people associated with Surf Excel, was to engage as wide a swathe of the population in helping their flood-affected fellow citizens as possible.
In doing so, Surf Excel ended up reinforcing the idea of learning by doing, without even needing to have their product appear anywhere in their advertising campaigns.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 21st, 2011.
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Good initiative and good read. To me as a non-marketing guy, generally marketing guys believe in "Handsome and Flashy Marketing Spend" rather than "Smart Marketing Spend" - We are not doing enought on the creative, smart and responsible marketing spend. It appears to me that we have very few professionals in the market who really contribute to the Strategic Direction Setting of the organisation, generally guys tend to take their leadership roles for granted.