Insight
Hajj is the biggest gathering in the world where more than two million people get together from 200 countries.
It is the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, taking place in the last month of the Islamic year. All Muslims are expected to make at least once during their lifetime if they can afford it (Muslims save and plan for it for months/years) as it is one of the Five Pillars of Islam.
However, overcrowding at a single venue also increases the main fears of pilgrims: Stampede when holly places are overcrowded, instability of surrounding construction sites and the fast spread of diseases and viruses. These fears increase when the pilgrims perform Hajj for the first time as they are not familiar on the steps of the pilgrimage.
Staying healthy and illness-free is extremely important during Hajj – and Dettol as a brand wanted a huge role to play in enabling people to fulfill their journey.
Strategy
- High chance of infection / illness: People are exposed to millions of other people in close proximity in hot climatic conditions. They will be carrying germs from across the world with them.
- Low immunity: Due to travel conditions and stress, change in weather, diet change, and overall fatigue – the immunity of people is also low.
- High Stakes of Falling ill: Falling ill during Hajj might mean that you may not be able to complete the pilgrimage – which has huge consequences. The person would have to re-do the pilgrimage another time in his / her life. The money that they had saved and spent for this trip all goes to waste. You lose out on an extremely important spiritual journey, and might impact the participation of other family members too.
Among the transmissible diseases recorded at Hajj in the past are Mers, meningitis, tuberculosis, polio & zoonotic…All of which can be avoided with good hygiene habits.
Dettol knows the fears of these vulnerable pilgrims go through, willing to take any preventive measures to make their journey as safe and enjoyable as possible and gives them reassurance that it can protect them against the spread of common viruses, bacteria for a safe and healthy Hajj/Umra.
Personal Wash Competition has not done a lot of activity during Hajj previously so it was a great opportunity for Dettol to own the communication around Hajj and maximise exposure.
Execution
Reaching a target effectively is the dream of every media campaign. Couple that with a reach that effectively touches lakhs of people and you have a campaign that is the stuff that dreams are made of.
The Dettol Hajj campaign was so well targeted that it reached almost 430,000 people – people who were pilgrims performing Hajj – so focused was the aim of the campaign.
Since the promise of Dettol being a protector during Hajj was crucial, it was also important to highlight the health and protection of Dettol using a medium that would be intimate to every pilgrim at Hajj.
This is where UM realised that mobile phones are the one item that reassures pilgrims on Hajj while they are away from home and family. Every pilgrim would be using a mobile phone to stay connected or Apps on the mobile to source information, so Dettol decided to connect with them in the manner that best suited the circumstance.
This was done through targeted SM posts to people interested in Hajj/Umra as well as partner with an app about Hajj/Umra and create content relevant to both pilgrims and Dettol.
Dettol also did targeted OOH campaigns and Airport OOH around the city of Mecca. This helped increase visibility and awareness of the brand in a tactical way as most Hajj pilgrims traffic would have seen the ad either in the Hajj airport terminal or in Mecca city through the muppi circuits spread across the holy city.
Results
Dettol communicated specific messages related to Hajj/Umra activity and during Hajj week traffic to the Dettol sections within app increased by 1419% vs. previous week with a total of over 2.1 million impressions after four weeks of the campaign only.
SM deliveries: The total reach of unique users for the campaign was over 1.9Million (38% of TG) benchmark @ 26%-30%
Total Reach 5.6+ million impressions over delivered by 14 % vs. projected KPIs with top performing post reaching 429,900+ people - with very positive engagement rates and positive comments from users.
In terms of sales the product, most notably the hand sanitizer, was out of stock in the main holy cities where Hajj is performed.
The app also won multiple awards and people liked it so much that they started creating tutorials and helped spread the word on it.