Results and Effectiveness

The campaign drove consumer engagement. 40,725 microsite homepage visits – a total of 99,011 page views across the four microsite pages 11,325 Webisodes views – equivalent of 94 hours of viewing time. 3,244 Facebook fans – ardent ambassadors for shower gel. The business goal of 1% increase in penetration was exceeded by 20% - attributable to a shift in purchase behaviour of bar soap users, the penetration of which declined proportionately. Palmolive achieved its highest share in one year in a major retailer, the highest in two in the other. Ranking for every SKU improved, delivering a massive revenue increase.

Creative Execution

A light-hearted and easy to share campaign was designed to deliver shock value and create a social stigma around bar soap usage that would motivate our socially conscious consumers to switch. Paid advertising was used to showcase soap-sharing “shockers”; owned content and social media to deliver scale and drive engagement. An online chain mail, The Grime Syndicate, recruited friends to share soap, see the effects of pass-on usage, and upload their photo to appear next to the soap. As our target loves a good soap, three-minute webisodes - the “Mould and the Beautiful” and “The Scum and the Restless” – were created, each a tongue-in-cheek social commentary on the promiscuous life of a bar of soap. Scripts made liberal use of soap puns. Finally, an iPhone application, Scrub a Grub determined participants “filthy factor” ranking them from “mildly mucky” to “dreadfully dirty” while endorsing the use of shower gel.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

As the dominant market leader in a flat shower gel category, it was clear that Palmolive could only achieve significant growth by attracting new category users. Marketing communication needed to 1) shift bar soap users to shower gel to deliver a 1% increase in penetration 2) establish Palmolive Naturals as the first choice for new category entrants Segmentation identified our key target as socially aspirational females with more money than good taste. Qualitative research revealed that the concept that shared bar soap was unhygenic, and therefore less socially acceptable, was much more motivating for our target than the product attributes of moisture, perfume and packaging - traditionally the focus of category communication. This insight provided scope for a new type of communication within the category allowing the brand opportunities to inject humour and elements of social currency into its communication.