The encyclopedia · Product & Design · Product decision · 2024
Harpic turned its toilet cleaner brand into an app that maps and rates public toilets.
Reckitt's Harpic built the Loocator app so women can find, rate and add nearby public toilets, replacing a silent daily compromise with a usable tool.
Reckitt · Harpic · tgthr
the move
A survey in Delhi found 70% of women struggle to find a public toilet when they need one, that they spend an average of 60 minutes searching, and that 81% drink less water to avoid needing one. The effect runs to school and job choices, not just inconvenience.
Rather than run only a campaign about the problem, Harpic and agency tgthr built the Loocator app. It finds nearby public toilets on a map and lets users rate each one on water, soap, tissue, cleanliness and lighting.
It also lets anyone add a toilet not yet mapped, so the data set grows from the same users who need it. The connected '#BeFreeToPee' campaign made the unspoken pattern explicit without pretending a film alone solved it.
The work was shortlisted for the Glass: The Lion for Change at Cannes Lions 2024 and won a Silver, and the app was live for daily use rather than as a stunt.
why it works
- Finding the next clean toilet is a recurring need, so an app is opened again and again
- Ratings let a woman judge a toilet before arriving, not after
- User-added toilets make the network grow without the brand building anything
- It addresses the root cause rather than dramatising the symptom
what transfers
If the pain is structural and recurring, the brand that ships the tool users keep open each day wins more trust than the one that only runs an ad about it.
what came after
The Loocator shipped on Android and iOS and moved the #BeFreeToPee conversation into a tool women can use daily. It was shortlisted at Cannes Lions 2024 in the Glass: The Lion for Change category and won a Silver, establishing a template for a hygiene brand fixing structural access rather than only advertising.
references
- Harpic launches Loocator app to find public toilets on-the-go
- Cannes Lions 2024: India scores 3 Glass shortlists
- tgthr, Leo Burnett, and McCann Worldgroup secure spots on the Glass Lions shortlist
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