Mumbai: Lodestar UM operates with a double bottom line – connecting profit and purpose in an effort to drive better outcomes in the world in every sense.
A core part of its DNA is ambition to drive better outcomes on behalf of the clients and demonstrate a strong social purpose in the communities. Reiterating its DNA, they celebrate Impact Day. On this day, they turn off the e-mails and close the office to come together to help their surrounding communities.
This year, Lodestar UM celebrated Impact Day on the 19th of July. The employees of Lodestar UM identified some relevant themes city wise and built an ‘Impact Plan’ around it.
Plastic has been a huge point of discussion in the country. Hence, they adopted the theme of “Say No to Plastic” across all offices except Mumbai. They roped in a client, Borosil, who has very nice glass water bottles costing roughly Rs 300 and created a vibrant ‘save marine life’ series of glass water bottles that could be customized for individuals with their names.
The employees of Lodestar UM approached their client partners to participate in the initiative by replacing the plastic water bottles on their tables with those specially designed glass ones. Large corporates across two cities Delhi & Bangalore, participated enthusiastically in the program – 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 demand for the glass bottles were way beyond what they had anticipated and ended up ordering three times the original quantity of glass bottles, all bought by individuals. The creative and art was done by FCB Interface.
Mumbai was a very different activity. Saki Naka in Andheri is an industrial area and generates a lot of garbage. And every little stretch of road has a garbage dump. Lodestar UM moved into the area about a year back. Initially, they tried very hard to get the landlord of the building to remove a large garbage dump outside the 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, they decided to make it as the UM Impact Day theme and execute the whole project from start to finish themselves.
But the cleaning up would be just the beginning… since it 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.
They 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. 19th of July 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.
On the Impact day, they 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 their client Nerolac Paints who also became the beautification partner. They changed the walls into an open classroom! While at one end of the wall had the Marathi alphabets painted in bold vibrant colours on the other end 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.
The highpoint of the day was a pledge that the employees took individually and collectively by passing a sapling in a recycled nerolac can “I pledge to keep the environment clean and plant more trees”.
For People in Lodestar UM, the whole exercise was not just one day; it was a whole new beginning and a fulfillment of a very different kind.
