This Diwali, Garnier Men Will Light Up Villages Once Again With #PowerLightAVillage

This Diwali, men’s skin care brand Garnier Men has rekindled its PowerLight A Village initiative aimed to light up hundreds of rural households in India that are without any electricity. The CSR initiative was started in collaboration with Project Chirag earlier this year, where the student project-turned-meaningful campaign has been instrumental in providing Solar based electrification to over 125 villages across the country. Every house is provided one solar lamp that also has an in-built mobile charging unit, 1 solar tube light and 1 solar panel to charge their equipment.

The main premise of the PowerLight A Village initiative is that every action made online on the social media platforms – every like, share and comment – is translated into actual energy donation on-ground.

Now entering its second phase, the initiative has so far provided electricity to more than 800 households in the villages of India, with over 1,271,770 watts generated online, 5600 tweets received and a total user engagement increase by almost 900% on the social media platforms. Through the simple medium of social media, Garnier Men reached out to more than a million consumers.

Powerlighting villages through Om

Digitally conceptualized and executed by FoxyMoron, the initiative is once again driving the social media masses to join the cause with a number of exciting and engaging activities weaved around storytelling. This time an emotional ad film depicts the story of Om, a little boy who goes through many adventures to ensure that his elder sister continues to study despite not having light in their hut.

Interestingly, Om’s story was revealed in bits on social networks before the release of the film. The 2.1 million strong Facebook community made up of ‘Men who matter’ were updated with visuals of Om’s adventures and were asked to guess what Om was up to. This was followed by calls asking fans to tweet to get Om closer to light. The link to the ‘Powerlight a Village’ Facebook app was also shared soon after, where actual watts could be generated with their social media interactions.

Twitter is also being leveraged to spread the buzz and get more people to contribute energy. Handled by ‘The Garnier Man’, the Twitter stream is abuzz with #PowerLightAVillage tweets since a week now. Twitter users have been encouraged to contribute to the cause for each of their interactions and stand to win gift hampers by the brand. Following the story of Om being revealed with teaser tweets, the Garnier Man has encouraged users to watch the film and share it.

Many activities have ensured conversations with #PowerLightAVillage. Contests around describing the video in one word to collecting the best 12 entries about the initiative and putting them on to the Garnier Man’s blog asking users to further decide the best and win hampers.

Here is the link: http://t.co/IKo8IuSQoj Tell me whose #PowerLightAVillage words you think are the best and why, and you could be a winner!

— The Garnier Man (@TheGarnierMan) October 30, 2013

Community engagement for a noble cause

True to its tagline ‘Take care’, Garnier Men has indeed taken the meaning to an actionable level with ‘Powerlight a village’ this Diwali. Roping in the community to contribute with their social interactions is a cool idea for a CSR campaign involving rural electrification. Besides, leveraging the power of storytelling on social media has also worked in the brand’s favour, in the second phase of the campaign. The story of Om invokes an emotional connect with the cause, that was somewhat missing in the earlier campaign.

The use of both Facebook and Twitter to reach out to the community and rewarding them with exciting incentives for their contributions make for a memorable campaign on social.

Powerlight a Village is an adorable CSR campaign that gets it social media right. Do contribute to light up lives this Diwali with your likes, tweets and shares.