IDE Social Marketing: Why Buy a Toilet?
By Vanessa Green
IDE WatSan (International Development Enterprises—Water and Sanitation) has developed a compelling social marketing approach that has driven rapid uptake, measured by total units sold. The IDE team uses picture-based materials and hands-on activities to help open a discussion about the sensitive topic of human waste.
The program starts with visits to each household where an invitation is given to invite the family to a village meeting on sanitation. The invitation cards have two sides, one showing a happy family with a latrine and the other showing a sick family with no latrine.
The next day a village meeting is held and the invitation cards are used by IDE staff to map the village, highlighting location of households with latrines. Next, community members are asked where they go to the bathroom today and sand is added to the picture to represent human waste (which ends-up covering most of the village). The mapping is followed by an activity on the five contamination pathways and then a safe water demonstration conducted by adding human feces collected from the local village to bottled water. After these activities and lots of engaging conversation between the villagers and the facilitator, attendees are asked to make a purchase commitment. At this point the local entrepreneur that will supply the villages is on hand to take orders.
Despite IDE’s emphasis on sanitation education, the WatSan team has found that latrines are predominantly seen by villagers as a status symbol, not a health product. The aspirational value of latrine drives purchase but may be counter to the goals of product adoption and correct use. For example, IDE has seen some cases where the $30 latrine is bought but not immediately installed. In these cases, the latrine could theoretically be installed immediately with a bamboo enclosure, but some households are waiting to save enough money to buy a more expensive cement brick enclosure that would maximize their status benefit. Given the emphasis on sanitation and health in the social marketing materials, this behavior seems counterintuitive; however, it clearly highlights the importance of incorporating local perceptions and drivers into all aspects of product development, marketing, and uptake expectations.
To-date, IDE’s strong social marketing campaign, supported by word of mouth and local social pressure have driven rapid growth in Easy Latrine sales, creating an initial Cambodian market for the product. As the market grows, IDE expects that a tipping point will be reached both at the community and regional level, and the sanitation market will reach a point where it grows organically and sustainably, with latrine use as the new status-quo.
