Results and Effectiveness

By using the busiest restaurants, we were able to effectively present our message to thousands of people. Many said that the activation definitely caught their eye because of the very large ‘clothes’ on their tables, which were always perfectly clean because spills were quickly cleaned up with the ‘Tide’ sponge. Overall, the activation was a success because we were able to communicate to our audience in a situation that was relevant to our message. Participants we spoke to clearly understood what we were saying and in the words of one, “Tide keeps it spotless”.

Creative Execution

For this activation to be successful, it had to be executed at restaurants that had heavy foot traffic. This is where the media team played a big role. They were able to get us into the most popular restaurants and got permission for us to carry out the activation for an entire week. They were also able to get us locations in different parts of town to increase our reach. Best of all, the media team were able to convince restaurant owners that the activation improved their establishments resulting in them allowing us to perform the activation for free.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

In Sri Lanka, Tide is positioned as a clothes detergent that keeps clothes spotlessly white. This message has real relevance to the product’s target audience, middle to upper class households, because school kids traditionally wear all-white uniforms. Despite modest advertising budgets, Tide has performed well but is not the market leader. The brand, successful amongst affluent audiences, wanted us to find a low-cost way to connect with the middle-class and promote its stain-fighting abilities. We first found a powerful insight related to roadside restaurants: our middle-class audience loves the food they serve but hates their sloppy service because it often leads to stained clothes. Using this, we devised a simple activation where we made easy-to-clean white tablecloths in the shape of common clothes for roadside restaurants and showed that any spills or drips, which normally cause stains, could be effortlessly removed with the help of Tide.