South Africa: Domestos brings hygiene advice to counter disease

Providing a clean, germ-free environment

Millions of people today lack access to clean sanitation facilities. The result is the rapid spread of germs that cause disease – diseases that are easily avoided with some simple steps in basic hygiene. 

In South Africa, especially in the townships, poor home hygiene continues to be a major cause of avoidable illnesses. With more than half a dozen people typically living under the same roof, germs spread quickly. The practice of using long-drop toilets or sharing outside flush toilets means that illnesses such as diarrhoea spread quickly. 

Our home care products help people to live healthy and hygienic lives. Today, through our Domestos brand, for example, we offer a range of products that kill germs and prevent the spread of harmful bacteria, just as we have been doing for over 70 years.

In South Africa, however, Domestos is often perceived as 'too expensive' by the country's lowest-income consumers. Communicating the value that this quality brand delivers in terms of improved hygiene and health therefore emerged as a priority for us. 

Raising brand & hygiene awareness

We tackled this by conducting presentations on home hygiene in selected townships. As a way of getting our message across, we worked through ‘stokvels’ - women's self-help and money-saving groups - and health clinics. 
We also carried out wet demonstrations in toilets or drains to show the effectiveness of Domestos in leaving such surfaces clean and germ-free. The sessions concluded with a free sample of a 100ml bottle of Domestos so that everyone could test it for themselves. 

The campaign – which was launched in 2005 – ran in townships in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town and met with considerable success.

We succeeded in reaching over 93 500 people with presentations at 900 stokvel meetings and 480 clinics. Helped by advertising and in-store offers, awareness of the Domestos brand among our target audience increased from 15% to 24%.