Strategic Innovation: Hindustan Lever Ltd.

"It's not enough to give people access to money," says Pratik Pota, 32, a marketing manager on the new-ventures team (or New Adventures, as it's dubbed). "We have to give them opportunities and train them in what to do with their savings. Our growth prospects are inextricably linked to these women's income generation."

Shakti represents a huge cultural challenge in India. And in many places, Pota faces tough going. In the village of Pochampally, he visits the home of Anjamma, a promising participant. Anjamma is the local leader of the Telugu Desam political party, and she runs one of the larger women's microcredits. She's blunt: It's hard to sell products to local villagers, she says, pointing to the boxes of soap bars and shampoo sachets stacked in the corner of her living room. Though accustomed to charging interest on her group's loans, she's struggling with how to sell the products at a margin.

But in the next village, Ravenpalli, Pota finds evidence of progress. In their spare time, a group of women weavers have taken to selling soaps and detergents to their neighbors. "I thought that we could sell the products for less than at the store and still make a profit," says Maheshwari, the leader. Though she's never sold before and has just a second-grade education, her billing book is perfectly organized. Sitting cross-legged on her dirt floor, Pota looks pleased.

"We're not doing this out of charity," Pota says. "But if you can contribute to a social cause while being profitable, then why not?"

Reinvention II: Change How You Market

As twilight sets on a weekly cattle-and-trade market in a village in Bihar, buyers collect their wares and gather in front of a stage. A performer lights a small fire on a plate to purify the stage. A mythological tale of romance begins. Then the performers -- magicians, singers, dancers -- offer a bit of local news and call out to surrounding villages.

In the next scene, performers are acting again, this time in the role of rural laborers. One man is worried that he's not strong enough to do his work. The other tells him, "Your body can't breathe if it's covered with mud." What he means is, if you're not clean, you're not strong, and you can't support your family. Variations of this message are sung to a catchy tune. The backdrop: a banner advertising Lifebuoy, Unilever's 106-year-old mass-market brand of soap in India.

Is rural folklore the best way to explain useful hygiene practices? Or does it co-opt a centuries-old tradition in the interest of crass consumerism? Cultivating poor consumers is often a series of long-term gambles that test the line between what's creative and what's exploitative. After producing 7,000 such live shows across rural India to promote Lifebuoy and five other brands, Hindustan Lever itself is unsure of the best method for connecting with consumers. But complicated circumstances call for a willingness to experiment.

In Bihar and in other villages of the more rural states of northeastern India, the landscape is different from that of the south. Television ownership is less widespread. Men, rather than women, go to the weekly haats. Here, swaying consumers doesn't involve switching from counterfeit brands to Lever brands. Instead, it involves switching people from infrequent to everyday washes using soap without making them feel profligate or inauthentic. The marketing challenge is to integrate the product into consumers' lives.

One strategy relied on science. Soap executives realized that people who didn't see dirt on their hands thought that their hands were clean. This attitude partly explained why people didn't wash their hands after washing clothes in the river or feeding the cows, a key cause of disease transmission. Although the connection was clear in the executives' mind, they had to create a similar urgency and emotional connection to soap for the consumer.

And what better place to educate people about the importance of frequent soap use than where 70 million people come to clean themselves? Hindustan Lever joined the pilgrims visiting Allahabad for Kumbh Mela, the religious festival held every 12 years. Executives wanted to show that dirt is always present, though often invisible. Marketers waved an ultraviolet-light wand over attendees' hands to show where germs and dirt resided. While the pilgrims came to bathe at the confluence of India's sacred rivers to cleanse their souls, they also learned to keep their hands free of pathogens.

The village street theaters represented a more emotional play. Lever and Ogilvy Outreach, the unconventional marketing arm of Ogilvy & Mather, recruited local magicians, dancers, and actors who knew each market and village that the company wanted to target. In total, 50 teams of 13 performers were recruited to serve as connections between the brands and the residents. Scripts were changed for different dialects, education levels, and religions. In all, Ogilvy coordinated two-hour performances at 2,005 haats over six months.