Dettol to promote healthy hand washing habits with a new campaign and a new product launch

As a part of its nationwide initiative “Dettol Banega Swachh India”, RB (formerly known as Reckitt Benckiser) India has today launched a new campaign to raise awareness around good hand washing habits. Considered as the gold standard in germ protection, Dettol has reached out to over 10 million mothers and children since 2006 to educate them about the importance of hygiene and sanitation. The new campaign aims to take this message to a larger audience through a catchy jingle which will be launched initially on digital platforms.

With a strong heritage of product innovation and creating new categories in the country, Dettol is also supporting this campaign by launching an affordable liquid hand-wash – Dettol Squeezy – at Rs. 30/-. An innovative format available in an easy to use and carry pack, it offers superior germ protection against regular bar soaps. Each bottle of Dettol Squeezy provides approx. 100 hand washes making it an efficient solution to drive good hand washing habits.

Speaking about the campaign, Mr. Nitish Kapoor, Regional Director South Asia at RB, said, “As a global leader in consumer health and hygiene; and with a history of over 150 years of innovation, we understand the extreme importance of hand hygiene and sanitation in the lives of our consumers. Through our wide-reaching campaign “Dettol Banega Swachh India”, we aim to focus on driving behaviour change in support of the Swaach Bharat initiative launched by the government. Promoting healthy hand washing habits is the first step towards achieving our objectives and we are continuously working on other interventions. For this new campaign, we are very happy to have worked with McCann to deliver an extremely important educational message to young children and mothers in an engaging and entertaining manner.”

Explaining the idea behind the campaign, Mr. Prasoon Joshi, Chairman – Asia Pacific, CEO & Chief Creative Officer – India, McCann Worldgroup said, “Through ‘Dettol Ka Dhula campaign’ we are trying to create a movement for a hygienic way of living and Dettol is an iconic brand with the trust and stature to drive a movement like this. Like all good habits, hand-washing also needs to be inculcated. One of the key insights is that whether in kids or adults habit formation happens through repetition. And in a country of oral tradition, we have always used music as a powerful way of teaching, we have used music & singing to remind & teach people about the habit of hand-washing.”

He also added that, “The Dettol jingle is a musical way of reminding people about cleanliness. We wanted to be persuasive yet entertaining without being instructional”.

Considered as the gold standard in germ protection, Dettol has become the trusted champion of health. Ranked consistently for more than a decade as one of the most trusted brands in the country, Dettol has remained truly consistent to the core of protection from germs.

Last year RB India launched “Dettol – Banega Swachh India” – a 5 year ambitious program to address the need of improving hygiene and sanitation in India, making a commitment to invest a sum of INR 100 crores towards this initiative across the next 5 years. Through a series of actions under this program, Dettol has spread the message of hygiene and sanitation to over 140 million people in the country and raised INR 281cr through a 12 hour fund raising Cleanathon with NDTV in December 2014.