If Unilever Can’t Make Feel-Good Capitalism Work, Who Can?

At an open-air school assembly hall in the dusty southern Vietnamese village of Phuoc Thanh, the consumer-products colossus Unilever is implementing a high-powered strategy to sell more soap: the handwashing dance.

It goes like this. Rub your left palm with your right hand, then clap, now right, clap, up, down, thumbs, knuckles, clap. Then repeat, scrubbing vigorously. The 200 or so children present on a muggy May morning, ages 8 to 10, know the routine by heart. Dressed in tidy uniforms of white short-sleeved shirts, red scarves, and matching tartan shorts, they leap from their plastic stools to mimic the six teenage instructors up front with impressive precision, shimmying up and down. The choreography, part of a campaign developed with Unilever’s behavioral scientists, manages to be at once cute and corporate. On the way out, the students are encouraged to pick up free Lifebuoy soap and P/S toothpaste at the school clinic. Naturally, it’s all made by Unilever.