We want to leverage our storytelling to make a difference: Sonia Huria

Viacom18 recently flagged off its CSR behaviour change communication campaign to tackle the unhygienic sanitation condition in the slums of Mumbai. The company has adopted four slums – Subhash Nagar, Dsouza Chawl, Upadhyay Nagar and Salve Nagar – in the densely populated Andheri suburb of Mumbai.

Under the umbrella of ‘Chakachak Mumbai’, Viacom18 has been working over the last year to renovate and reconstruct over 200 toilets for the residents of these areas. Underlining the importance of instigating a change in people’s mindset at the ground level, Viacom18 has roped in Padma Shri and Ramon Magsaysay award winner Jockin Arputham and under-privileged women’s self-help collective Mahila Milan to undertake a concerted behaviour change communication programme.

In this interaction with AdGully, Sonia Huria, Vice President & Head, Corporate Communications & CSR at Viacom18 Media, speaks at length about this CSR initiative of Viacom18, leveraging the group’s storytelling capabilities to bring in effective behavior change, and more. Excerpts:

What is the genesis of Viacom18’s CSR initiative, ‘Chakachak Mumbai’? How did the network consider to get involved with this hygiene and cleanliness drive?
We are great storytellers and our intent was to leverage this strength of ours into making a difference in the cause that we supported. And though our internal brainstorming sessions, it emerged that health and sanitization was a cause that, while it garnered a tremendous response throughout the country, it needed a strong storyboard to permeate the mindspace of every Indian.

Our take on hygiene and cleanliness is not just restricted to the physical aspect but also the psychological conundrums that the lack of these, throw up.

Apart from Mumbai, which other cities/ towns is this initiative targetting?
As evinced by the name, the on-ground activation of Chakachak Mumbai is currently limited to this metropolis. The subservient campaign that we had initiated, as a series of social experiments, amplified through the digital medium – #GetAngry Project – however, transcend geographical boundaries.

You are heading this initiative. How did you get involved in this?
As the Communications Head of the entire network, I’d often been involved in the various pro-social campaigns that individual brands of Viacom18 conducted. So in a sense I had already been initiated. When the opportunity to lead the network CSR initiative came, it seemed only natural to accept it.

A 3-film campaign has also been launched as part of this initiative. Please elaborate on the concept and the insight behind these videos.
While the primary audience of our CSR initiative is the residents of the four slums in Andheri where the groundwork is currently focused, the larger audience comprises all Indians who are capable of distinguishing the clean from the unclean. All of us, in ways unique to our socio-economic segmentation, can champion the cause of a Clean India. It follows that such a diverse audience needs to be addressed in sharply segmented ways. Hence, while Chakachak Mumbai is the direct overarching campaign that comprises both on-ground and in-mind interventions, #GetAngry Project is the subservient communication campaign focused solely on enhancing positive behavior change.

The way I see it, hygiene manifests both as a physical and a psychological entity. The moment one starts thinking clean, one starts being clean. Between these two states, and by addressing them through two diverse media, we had the two distinct audiences covered. As we scale up the initiative, we could look to diversify the media to amplify the idea.

Usually people tend to switch off when the campaign is too preachy or too negative. How has Viacom18 avoided that and kept the people engaged?
The idea was not to play judge or a sermonising figure, rather explore what cleanliness meant to us in our regular lives. To that end, we conducted a series of social experiments released the videos on social media with the intent to monitor and learn from the conversations that they would generate. 2.5 million views on Facebook and a Twitter trend later, we now have a rich bank of insights to mine through!

The #GetAngry Project started out as an experiment to validate certain takeaways from our research findings. Given the overwhelming response it has generated, we would like to build upon this momentum to carry forward the overarching Chakachak Mumbai campaign and its underlying thought of “the road to prosperity lies through cleanliness”.

Areas like hygiene and responsibility towards one’s surroundings require huge attitudinal and behaviourial change. Do you think initiatives like Chakachak Mumbai and #GetAngry Project are adequate to bring about that change? What more needs to be done?
In isolation, a social initiative is hardly enough to bring about a meaningful mass behaviorial change. The efficacy of such initiatives lie in their power to build a cohesive momentum that can mobilise enough people to act as agents of change.

Through Chakachak Mumbai and #GetAngry Project we’ve tried to initiate our contribution in kickstarting this momentum. It is only through perseverance that we can attain the critical mass needed to usher in meaningful winds of change.

What next have you planned as part of this initiative? Where do you go from here?
One of the primary motivations for us was to leverage our storytelling capabilities to bring in effective behavior change communication. To attain the dream of Swachh Bharat we need a behaviorial change programme that communicates the reasons and benefits of an India that is clean in both mind and body. We have just begun communicating this through our underlying BCC theme – the road to prosperity lies through cleanliness. We intend to continue building on this theme, both at micro and macro levels, through our on ground interventions and BCC campaigns.

The place to go is defined pretty well – a cleaner, healthier and prosperous India. It is the journey that we wish to define!

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