Tag: FCB Ulka

By A Correspondent

Lodestar UM celebrated Impact Day on July 19. It was a day when the agency network turned off emails and shut the office to come together to help our surrounding communities.

Notes a communique: “Plastic has been a huge point of discussion in the country. We adopted the theme of “Say No to Plastic” across all offices except Mumbai. We roped in a client, Borosil, who has very nice glass water bottles costing roughly Rs 300.  We created a vibrant ‘save marine life’ series of glass water bottles that could be customised for individuals with their names. Our employees approached their client partners to participate in our initiative by replacing the plastic water bottles on their tables with our specially designed glass ones. Large corporates across two cities Delhi and Bengaluru participated in our programme – Whirlpool, IndusInd, Viacom , BMW, Times of India , SAIL , IOCL , McCann,  Cheil, FCB, Wipro, Exide Life Insurance, Air Asia , Duroflex, Amante. In fact, individuals were even willing to pay for the bottles!  The enthusiasm was unbelievable. The demand for our glass bottles was way beyond what we had anticipated. We ended up ordering three times the original quantity of glass bottles, all bought by individuals. The creative and art was done by FCB Interface.”

And in Mumbai, there was a very different activity. Adds the communique: “Saki Naka in Andheri is an industrial area and generates a lot of garbage. And every little stretch of road has a garbage dump. We moved into the area about a year back. Initially, we tried very hard to get the landlord of our building to remove a large garbage dump outside our premises and clean up the surrounding area. It’s an uphill task given the multiple stakeholders that are involved, permissions required and the sheer staff that would be needed to take on an activity of this scale. Since it didn’t happen for many months we decided to make it our UM Impact Day theme and execute the whole project from start to finish ourselves. But the cleaning up would be just the beginning… since this was a public road it required a lot more than just cleaning up. It meant changing the behaviour of people from all the offices, restaurants, hospitals, housing societies etc in the locality to sustain the clean-up. It meant that the whole community had to think different and act differently. For a cleaner, greener surrounding.  We had to not only ensure that we provided an alternative method for garbage collection but we also had to align everybody who was dumping garbage on the street to the new way. We reached out to the authorities, restaurants, other commercial buildings, hospitals and housing societies and enrolled them in our plan. We then distributed dustbins to individual organisations and worked with the authorities on method, timings, location etc. on how the garbage will get collected.  All this took months of effort.  July 19 was the culmination of all the hard work. While the initiative was being driven by Lodestar UM, seeing the energy and enthusiasm around this mission all the other offices in the building including FCB Ulka, FCB Interface, Initiative, Rapport wanted to be part of it. Yesterday, we had over 200 employees of Lodestar UM and all the other companies come together, on the street, to transform the area.  They swept the roads, scraped the walls of fungus and painted them with paint provided by our client Nerolac Paints who also became our beautification partner. And we didn’t just paint the walls, we made it a learning opportunity. An open classroom! While at one end of the wall we had the Marathi alphabets painted in bold vibrant colours on the other end we created a large blackboard where people could doodle to learn and play. The final brushstroke was green – 120 plants in colourful pots.  The creative and art done by FCB Ulka.”

Lodestar employees had a field day, literally and figuratively, adds the release. “They picked up different tools to clean up the area – sweeping, picking up the garbage, covering drains, putting paver blocks, cementing the road, painting, gardening, watering the plants… And the highpoint of the day was a pledge that they took individually and collectively by passing a sapling in a recycled Nerolac can “I pledge to keep the environment clean and plant more trees”.  This for us was not just one day, it was a whole new beginning. And a fulfilment of a very different kind.”