P&G Enlists Bloggers to Help Clean the World's Water

Blogivation. It's Procter & Gamble's way of saying it's engaging bloggers in its corporate social responsibility efforts. P&G is hoping those efforts aren't a wash — particularly as its CSR power is focused on a multi-year commitment to helping clean the world's water supplies, particularly for children and creatures.

The consumer goods giant has helped clean up oil spills including the recent BP disaster with its Dawn dishwashing liquid, and Pantene is the latest P&G brand stepping up in its "Healthy Hair for Healthy Water" pro-social initiative aimed at developing countires.

Keeping the ball rolling, the company has announced its blogger-focused Give Health Clean Water Blogivation effort to help make clean water available for developing countries and disaster relief.

The initiative's roots reach back to the BlogHer '10 conference in August, where P&G asked attendees to help spread the word by publishing a post about safe drinking water.

Now P&G is making a widget widely available to bloggers to embed in their sites. The widget includes a unique offer — every visitor's click results in a donation by P&G to clean water for one person for one day in the form of packets of PUR, a water purifier co-developed by P&G and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

P&G's goal for its Children's Safe Drinking Water program is 100,000 days of clean water — at the recent Clinton Global Initiative, it refined that goal to "saving a life every hour" — and the company says its safe water program will continue until that goal is reached.

Involving and educating bloggers, particularly so-called mommy bloggers, is an important part of a strategy to create awareness for Give Health Clean Water. The company feels that getting the message out through "change agents" like bloggers and socially responsible media will offer the broadest reach. P&G is partnering with Changents.com to extend the program's reach.

P&G has also promoted Give Health Clean Water to consumers using coupons in its brandSAVER coupon booklets, distributed with newspapers. P&G's Give Health program is a broader initiative that provides clean water, vaccines and education to children in need.