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Lodestar UM celebrates Impact Day; strives for a clean and better world
Impact Day is about the agency taking a day off to come together and help surrounding communities.
On July 19, Lodestar UM, the media agency from the stables of IPG Mediabrands, celebrated 'Impact Day'. It was a day when the agency turned off its emails and closed the office to come together to help the surrounding communities.
The agency identified some relevant themes city-wise and built an 'Impact Plan' around it.
Team members of Lodestar Mumbai cleaning the road
With plastic being a huge point of discussion in the country, Lodestar UM, adopted the theme of 'Say No to Plastic' across all offices, except Mumbai. They roped in a client, Borosil, who make glass water bottles costing roughly Rs 300. The agency created a vibrant 'save marine life' series on glass water bottles that could be customised for individuals with their names.
Lodestar UM Gurgaon Team with Prannoy Roy from NDTV
Large corporates which participated across two cities - Delhi and Bangalore - were Whirlpool, IndusInd, Viacom, BMW, Times of India, SAIL, IOCL, McCann, Cheil, FCB, Wipro, Exide Life Insurance, Air Asia, Duroflex, and Amante. The creative and art was done by FCB Interface.
Lodestar UM Bengaluru Team all geared up for Impact Day
The agency did a separate activity for Mumbai - Saki Naka in Andheri is an industrial area that generates a lot of garbage. Every little stretch of road has a garbage dump. The agency decided to make a UM Impact Day theme and execute the whole project from start to finish. But cleaning up was just the beginning... since this was a public road, it required a lot more. The undertaking 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 and act differently.
For a cleaner, greener surrounding, the agency had to not only ensure they provided an alternative method for garbage collection but they also had to align everybody who was dumping garbage on the street, to the new way. The agency reached out to the authorities, restaurants, other commercial buildings, hospitals, and housing societies and enrolled them in their plan. They then distributed dustbins to individual organisations and worked with the authorities on method, timings, location etc. as to how the garbage will be collected. All this of this effort took months of planning and preparing. 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, other offices in the agency's building, including FCB Ulka, FCB Interface and Initiative, and Rapport wanted to be part of it. On July 19, over 200 employees of Lodestar UM and all the other companies came together on the street, to transform the area. They swept the roads, scraped the fungus off the walls and painted them with paint provided by Nerolac Paints (a client) who also became their 'Beautification partner'. They didn't just paint the walls, they made it a learning opportunity; an open classroom. While at one end of the wall they had the Marathi alphabets painted in bold, vibrant colours; on the other end they created a large blackboard where people could doodle to learn and play. The final brushstroke was green - 120 plants were planted in colourful pots. The creative and art is done by FCB Ulka.
Lodestar UM's employees had a field day both literally and figuratively. 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 also took a pledge - 'I pledge to keep the environment clean and plant more trees' - individually and collectively by passing a sapling around in a recycled Nerolac can.