Creative agency Ogilvy and the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), also known as Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), are urging people to try a different sport. Dumping garbage into, and not near, the garbage bin!
This is being done as part of the Clean-Up! campaign, which was launched in Mumbai in November 2007. The authorities have a tough time keeping the city clean. While some people have the habit of throwing waste anywhere, without even looking around for a garbage bin, others will take the trouble to locate a garbage bin, but drop the waste somewhere around it. The usual argument is: ‘BMC hai na safai ke liye!’
This severely hampers the BMC’s efforts for city beautification.Team Ogilvy has been working on the Clean-Up! campaign and has developed and executed an initiative in consultation with the BMC, urging Mumbaikars to put garbage where it belongs – inside the bin. The challenge was to communicate the idea without sounding preachy.
Basketball type hoops have been placed on top of garbage and waste bins at 10 strategic locations in Mumbai. The basket suspended on top of a bin adds a bit of play to the whole exercise of binning the waste, thus attracting conscious efforts from the general public in a lighthearted manner. Furthermore, the bins bear the message, ‘Be A Sport’, in order to egg on people.
The initiative was ideated by Ogilvy and executed by OgilvyAction. The creative team came up with the ideation and the Action team took the initiative forward – right from getting approvals from the additional municipal commissioner, RA Rajeev, to the selection of the eight initial apt locations, with further permissions obtained from each ward commissioner and the private citizens’ trust in the locations and, finally, the right executions.
Nabendu Bhattacharyya, President, OgilvyAction, said, “Keeping in mind the garbage issues in Mumbai, the Ogilvy creative team came up with a concept with which one could educate people with lighter, intelligent communication so that Mumbaikars would feel the need to keep the city as clean as possible and, in turn, make others aware of the need to be responsible citizens.”
The initiative was implemented at prominent locations such as the Band Stand and Carter Road in Bandra, in VT, at KC College in Churchgate, Fort, Fashion Street and other places. Some of these stretches have more than one implementation.
The initiative was started on December 30. Interestingly, a huge reduction in litter around the bins has been seen, which itself proclaims the success of the initiative.
As part of the Clean-Up! campaign, Ogilvy earlier launched an outdoor campaign in which people could record videos of litter offenders on their mobiles or cameras and send them in. The BMC, in turn, would publish the offenders’ pictures, thus causing them embarrassment.
As for the Be A Sport idea, the authorities are now looking for corporate sponsors to take the initiative forward. “The idea is to scale up as much as possible, so we need corporates to extend their support,” says Bhattacharyya.