News Broadcasting
GroupMs Dialogue Factory Initiates a Dialogue with Safe Water Network at World Water Week in Stockholm
MUMBAI: Dialogue Factory, GroupM’s experiential marketing arm, was a participant in the recently concluded World Water Week in Stockholm. Dialogue Factory shared the lessons and opportunities for using experiential marketing to increase the number of low-income consumers purchasing safe water. Dialogue Factory has been working on the brand mandate of US-based NGO Safe Water Network to build a communication model that helped create awareness and market safe drinking water in Andhra Pradesh, India.
Safe Water Network works in the field of providing safe drinking water to low-income consumers in India and Ghana. Co-founded in 2006 by actor and philanthropist Paul Newman, along with prominent civic and business leaders, it brings together diverse capabilities form the public and private sectors.
“The challenge was to create a self-sustainable model for the rural audience that would not just ensure trials but also adoption addressing all the key stakeholders,” says Dalveer Singh – Head – Experiential Marketing Asia Pacific, Dialogue Factory.
Modus Operandi
· Safe Water Network faced a challenge in generating enough revenue from water sales to cover the costs of operating a safe water plant in rural India. As the model followed the principle of affordability and inclusion to serve the bottom of pyramid communities. Without that revenue to pay for operator’s salaries, power, consumables, etc., the plant would fail soon after it launched.
· The solution lay in accelerating household demand for safe water by convincing more people to purchase water through a consumer activation program.
· The agency started with understanding the key stakeholders through a field survey in Warangal district of Andhra Pradesh and picked up a key insight that ‘The water that’s visibly clean is good enough, my forefathers have been surviving on this and so will I’.
· Insight – although the district was bearing the ill effects of high fluoride in the ground water (which causes fluorosis, a very painful and debilitating skeletal disorder) a minority of them related it to the water they drank.
· This was the insight basis on which Dialogue Factory built the complete behavior change program of ‘Ijal Swathya Abhiyan’.
“Lack of awareness and knowledge made it difficult to start a conversation with the community; the need was to have a communication package that was convincing”, says Ravi Sewak, Country Manager Safe Water Network.
The first step in creating a brand traction was to build a brand identity for iJal, the strategy team worked on the platform of water that leads to health (after Research by IMRB indicated that communities understood health messaging better than prosperity messages) and positioned the brand as ‘iJal Swasthya Kal’ .As part of the brand identity completely new brand logo, branding and local communication material was developed.
The next step was to get the local community on board, but to do so it was important to engage with the key opinion leaders so for the first time in the rural context computer tablets as a tool of communication were used with customized message in local language for the stakeholders.
“The tablet platform is cost effective and also brought standardization and ease of replication for scale to what has historically been a challenging communication” says Ravi Sewak, Country Manager Safe Water Network.
“A water health card that measured the water quality of each household not only shocked communities but also created conversations around it. One of the key pillars to the success of this program was the use of marketing principles in a social sector campaign that led to adoption” adds Dalveer Singh, – Head – Experiential Marketing Asia Pacific, Dialogue Factory.
The result of this innovative work was a 50% increase in the amount of water sold. This means that not only are more people getting healthy, but that water plant that provides the water will be functioning for a long time.
News Broadcasting
CNN-News18 to air live counting day coverage for five state election results on May 4
The channel is rolling out its biggest election coverage machinery yet for results day on 4th May
NOIDA: The votes have been cast. Now comes the reckoning. CNN-News18 is pulling out all the stops for results day on 4th May, when counting begins across five battleground states — West Bengal, Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and the Union Territory of Puducherry — in what promises to be one of the most closely watched electoral verdicts in recent memory.
The channel’s coverage, titled Battle for the States: The Verdict, kicks off at 7am and runs through the day across linear TV, connected television and YouTube. It is the culmination of CNN-News18’s multi-format editorial initiative, Battle for the States, which has tracked the polls from the beginning under the theme Road to Power.
At the operational heart of the coverage will be the Live Results Hub, the channel’s central command centre built to collate, verify and process real-time data flowing in from reporters stationed at counting centres across constituencies. The hub combines newsroom intelligence, analytics and on-the-ground reporting to deliver what the channel promises will be the fastest and most accurate results coverage in English news.
Leading the on-air charge will be primetime anchors Rahul Shivshankar, Anand Narasimhan, Aman Sharma, Nabila Jamal and Shivani Gupta. They will be joined by a wide panel of commentators including author Chetan Bhagat; GVL Narasimha Rao, senior leader of the BJP; Smita Prakash, editor of ANI; activist Saira Shah Halim; political analyst Sumanth C Raman; Abhijit Iyer Mitra, senior fellow at IPCS; Amitabh Tiwari, founder of VoteVibe; columnist Abhijit Majumdar; Nalin Mehta, managing editor of MoneyControl; political analyst Tehseen Poonawalla; senior journalist Subir Bhaumik; and political analyst Manojit Mandal.
Shivshankar, who serves as editorial affairs director at CNN-News18, set out the stakes plainly. “Counting day is one of the most watched events in the electoral cycle, where speed and credibility are tested in real time,” he said. “Battle for the States: The Verdict is built on that promise, combining ground reporting, sharp analysis and cutting-edge election technology to give viewers the clearest and fastest route to the verdict. On May 4, CNN-News18 will once again be the nation’s most trusted channel to witness democracy in action.”
Smriti Mehra, chief executive of English and Business News at Network18, framed the coverage in broader terms. “Elections are defining national events, and audiences turn to brands they trust in moments that matter,” she said. “CNN-News18 has consistently led from the front in every election coverage, and this special programming reflects the scale of our ambition and editorial strength.”
The channel has form here. It claims to have been India’s most preferred English news destination for election results for the past 20 years, covering everything from the 2024 general elections to the Delhi, Maharashtra, Bihar and BMC polls on the back of what it calls an “Always First, Always Right” record. Five states, one day, and a nation waiting for answers. The clock starts at 7am on 4th May.
