Dr. Myriam Sidibe is one of the world’s experts in behavioral health. Her focus: handwashing.
As the Global Social Mission Director for Lifebuoy soap, she has not only brought the brand to new levels as a business, she has helped handwashing become more commonplace all over the world.
“Over the last four years, business has grown double digits, whilst child mortality has reduced in all the places where soap use has increased,” she says in her 2014 TED Talk. “It may be uncomfortable for some to hear — business growth and lives saved somehow equated in the same sentence — but it is that business growth that allows us to keep doing more.”
Dr. Myriam Sidibe brings real-life results
Dr. Sidibe was the first social mission manager for Unilever, which she joined in 2006. She worked with various NGOs, the UN, and the company’s competitors to promote hand-washing initiatives throughout the world to help save lives. This has helped both the communities in which they advertised, as well as the business.
A randomized trial in India showed a 25% reduction in diarrhea and a 46% reduction in eye infections, as well as a drop in child mortality in many countries where her program was launched. The business is flourishing as well; “in fact, at Unilever, brands with a social mission, including Lifebuoy, grew 46% faster than the rest of the business and delivered 70% of revenues from 2017 to 2018.”
Dr. Sidibe was behind the UN’s Global Handwashing Day and is also a trustee at WaterAid, “the world’s largest civil society organization on Water and Sanitation.” She has also recently published a book called “Brands on a Mission”, which helps demonstrate how businesses can use marketing to change social standards for the better and increase both mental and physical health through their products.
Travel pushed Dr. Myriam Sidibe towards public health
Dr. Sidibe hails originally from Mali and studied at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, as well as Loughborough University. She also studied at McGill University in Canada and is a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Mossavar Rahmani Center.
“As the daughter of a United Nations economist and health official, I grew up in Mali and more than 20 other countries,” Dr. Sidibe told Harvard Business Review. “As a professional adult I worked in dozens more, mostly emerging nations.”
This first drove her to consider the power of marketing and business in developing markets and nations. “After all, influencing behavior is what marketers do best,” she explains.
In the midst of the pandemic, Dr. Myriam Sidibe calls upon brands to do more and do it better
Dr. Sidibe emphasizes the availability of soap and corporate responsibility in increasing handwashing. In fact, Lifebuoy soap brand began in England in 1894 to combat cholera.
“A hundred and eighteen years later, the solution is exactly the same: It’s about ensuring that they have access to this bar of soap, and that they’re using it, because that’s the number one way to actually stop cholera from spreading,” she explains. “I think this drive for profit is extremely powerful, sometimes more powerful than the most committed charity or government.”
In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, Dr. Sidibe’s work is all the more important. However, she has noted that in the United States, handwashing rates have gone down with the widespread use of hand sanitizer. “Handwashing with soap is a far more effective way than hand sanitizer to prevent the virus’ spread,” she explains, “…To achieve the same effect as soap with sanitizer, you would need to immerse your hands in large amounts of it.” As a result, she tells Entrepreneur that she is calling all soap brands on engaging with communities, governments, and NGOs to promote handwashing, harness the power of marketing, and design more convenient soap products for all to use.
Watch Dr. Sidibe’s TEDTalk here.
