Lodestar UM celebrates Impact Day, takes up cleanliness, beautification drive

Lodestar UM celebrated Impact Day on July 19 by identifying some relevant themes city-wise and building an ‘Impact Plan’ around it. As a part of it, the agency got down on the roads and took up cleanliness and beautification of the area surrounding its Mumbai office in Andheri.

Leaders at the IPG Mediabrands agency network and employees participated in the drive. Among them were Shashi Sinha, CEO, IPG Mediabrands and Nandini Dias, CEO, Lodestar UM.

The agency said, “A core part of our DNA is our ambition to drive better outcomes on behalf of our clients and demonstrate a strong social purpose in our communities. That is why we celebrate Impact Day. A day when we turn off our e-mails and close the office to come together to help our surrounding communities.”

Plastic has been a huge point of discussion in the country. The agency adopted the theme of ‘Say No to Plastic’ across all offices, except Mumbai. It roped in a client, Borosil, that offers glass water bottles costing roughly Rs 300. Creating a vibrant ‘save marine life’ series of glass water bottles, the agency customised these for individuals with their names. The employees approached their client partners to participate in the initiative by replacing plastic water bottles on their tables with our specially designed glass ones.

Large corporates across Delhi and Bangalore– Whirlpool, IndusInd, Viacom, BMW, Times of India , SAIL , IOCL , McCann,  Cheil, FCB, Wipro, Exide Life Insurance, Air Asia, Duroflex, Amante – participated in the programme. Individuals were even willing to pay for the bottles. The creative and art was done by FCB Interface.

SakiNaka in Andheri is an industrial area and generates a lot of garbage. And every little stretch has a garbage dump. The agency had moved into the area about a year back from its office in Lower Parel. Initially, the agency, through its official complaints and social media, tried very hard to get the landlord of the building and the authorities to remove a large garbage dump outside the premises. 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.

In a statement, the agency said, “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. We had to not only ensure that we provided an alternative method for garbage collection but we also had to align all people dumping garbage on the street to the new way. We reached out to authorities, restaurants, other commercial buildings, hospitals and housing societies and enrolled them in our plan.”

While the initiative was being driven by Lodestar UM, all the other offices in the building, including FCB Ulka, FCB Interface, Initiative, Rapport, wanted to be part of it. On that day, over 200 employees of Lodestar UM and all the other companies came together, on the street, to transform the area. The walls were also cleaned and painted using the paint provided by Nerolac Paints, which became the beautification partner. The walls turned out to be open classrooms. While at one end of the wall there were Marathi alphabets painted in bold vibrant colours, on the other end there was a large blackboard where people could doodle to learn and play. The final brushstroke was green – 120 plants in colourful pots.

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