Dettol Uses #Handfies To Promote Handwashing And A #SwachhBharat too

For Global Handwashing Day, Dettol India has launched the handfie campaign where for each handfie shared, the brand will educate one child on handwashing with soap

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Dettol handfie

Its Global Handwashing Day (GHD) on October 15. Originally created for children and schools to promote habitual handwashing with soap, the occasion is now celebrated globally to raise awareness on the importance of handwashing. Washing hands with soap can help prevent diarrhoea and respiratory diseases and also reduce child mortality rates by about 50%.

As a build up to Global Handwashing Day, soap brand Dettol from Reckitt Benckiser is taking handwashing awareness to the digital world. It has launched a global campaign called #Handfie, which as the name suggests, is a selfie of your hands shared for a cause.

All one has to do to join the movement is click a picture of their clean hands and upload their #handfie. For every handfie shared, Dettol pledges to teach a child healthy handwashing habits. Handfies are being featured at the campaign website ‘Give Life a hand’.

Dettol’s #Handfie campaign is leveraging social media to raise awareness in a fun way. Together with NDTV India, it has launched the ‘Banega Swachh India’ initiative too. So along with clean handfies, the campaign is now extended onto a clean India too. People are being encouraged to share #SwachhIndia pictures and the best ones will be aired on NDTV.

Dettol India has run a promoted hashtag #Handfie on Twitter India as well as roped in celebrities to share their handfies, as part of the campaign. In addition, the campaign is also fast catching up with the recent social media relay trend where you do something and tag your friends, family to do the same and pass it along.

Giving life a handfie!

The concept is clever. Selfies are the most popular pictures to be shared on social media with Instagram being the top most social network for sharing selfies. For a simple awareness campaign, sharing handfies works just fine. Selfies may be done to death in brand campaigns owing to their popularity, but selfie variations like this one are always welcome. It is the promoted trend on Twitter and the handfies that were floating on my Twitter timeline that made me aware of the campaign in the first place.

The other trend picked up well here is social media tagging made popular after the viral #IceBucketchallenge (global ALS awareness initiative) followed by India’s very own #RiceBucketChallenge (sharing rice with someone needy) and now PM Modi’s #CleanIndia or #SwachhBharat (sweeping clean your area) that has got the nation talking about the movement. Popular personalities further add on to the campaign appeal.

Cool way to involve people through social media and help start a digital chain spreading awareness on handwashing.