Ganesh Chaturthi is one of India’s most widely celebrated festivals.

Devotees across the country welcome Lord Ganesha by bringing beautifully crafted idols to their homes, performing prayers and rituals for several days. The festival culminates on the 10th day with the immersion of the idol in water — a ritual called visarjan. This tradition symbolises the cycle of creation and dissolution, and is celebrated with devotion, music, and community gatherings.

While the festival is deeply cherished, the widespread use of plaster of Paris (POP) idols and chemical paints poses a significant environmental challenge. When these idols are immersed in rivers, lakes, and ponds, they reduce the water-holding capacity of the water bodies and pollute the aquatic ecosystem, harming both life and livelihoods.

Recognising this, Dainik Bhaskar launched the Mitti Ke Ganesh campaign to encourage eco-friendly celebrations, promoting clay (mitti) idols and immersing them at their home in a pot, making it an environmentally sustainable practice.

Crowd-sourced marketing

For over 14 years, Mitti Ke Ganesh has worked to sensitise readers to:

• Choose eco-friendly clay idols over POP ones.
• Perform home visarjan to protect water bodies.

Clay idols are not always readily available in the market because they are fragile, making them expensive. To address this, we created step-by-step DIY videos to enable our readers to make their own Mitti Ke Ganesh at home.

But in 2024, we took this campaign to new heights with the insight: “1,000 DIY videos will have a wider impact than a single video.”

To bring this idea to life, we launched a DIY video dontest. Readers were invited to create their own clay Ganesh idols at home and post a short video of the process on social media, tagging Dainik Bhaskar and using #MittiKeGanesh and #DainikBhaskarKiPehel.

The objectives were clear:

• Amplify awareness using user-generated content.
• Leverage organic reach, as videos circulated among friends and family.
• Inspire a domino effect, encouraging others to create and share their own idols.
• Reward top creators with exciting prizes to motivate participation.

Supported by print, radio, and digital campaigns, the initiative became a nationwide movement, combining fun, creativity, and sustainability.

Impact and outcomes

The campaign achieved remarkable results. Over 10,000 registrations resulted in 2,287 approved DIY videos, more than double the initial target.

Every approved video was shared on multiple personal social media handles, carrying Dainik Bhaskar branding and hashtags, creating a ripple effect of awareness.

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