In a series of online-only videos shot in a mock documentary style, “Inside Dirt: The Dirty Truth About Your Clean Laundry,” a crusading filmmaker (played by the actor Jim Annan) declares what he calls “a state of detergency” and confronts consumers at places like gyms and laundromats. To demonstrate that clean-looking clothes may be soiled, he holds an ultraviolet light up to shirts, revealing spots primarily on armpits.
“Ever since laundry detergent was invented, we’ve been sold the same stories,” he says in one video. “It’s the visible stains that you have to worry about — but what about the stains that you can’t see?”
Wisk, a Sun Products brand, was reformulated and adopted the moniker Wisk Deep Clean in 2012, and it now claims to remove hidden body oils and sweat better than competitors.
The new videos, by Union in Toronto, part of MDC Partners, with direction by Jeff Low and production by OPC, will officially be introduced on Tuesday on YouTube and on a new Web site for the brand, Inside-Dirt.com. Also on Tuesday, the videos will be promoted and advertised on Web sites including the Huffington Post, Hulu and NYTimes.com.
On The New York Times site, online readers will be able to perform a virtual version of the demonstration from the videos: the cursor acts as an ultraviolet light, and waving it over what appears to be a clean shirt reveals spots.
In the first nine months of 2012, Wisk spent $3 million on advertising, and Tide, the category-leading Procter Gamble brand, spent $107.6 million, according to the Kantar Media unit of WPP.
Switching from a sales pitch about eliminating stains to one about unseen soiling may seem to be an about-face, but Cheryl McKenzie, group account director for Union, said that what remained consistent for Wisk was a willingness to address unpleasantness.
“This is a brand that has had a history of being very straight talking and telling it like it is,” Ms. McKenzie said. “Ring around the collar was an issue that no one was talking about and was taboo at the time, and the new taboo that no one is talking about is that while you can’t see the dirt that’s in your clothes, it’s there.”
In October, Wisk introduced an online-only commercial where actors were handed a jar with a gelatinous yellow glob meant to represent hidden body oil and sweat from 35 loads of laundry. The spot, by Poptent, has attracted more than 2.1 million views on YouTube.
Lora Van Velsor, director of marketing for Wisk, said that while her brand and others have traditionally focused on removing stains, household cleaning brands already address unseen germs.
“When we talked to consumers,” Ms. Van Velsor said, “they said that whether it’s in the kitchen or the bathroom, they’re looking for thorough cleaning. They know that it can’t just look clean — it has to be clean all the way through.”
With laundry detergent formulations having improved enough in recent decades that many consumers trust store brands for stain removal, “there is so little differentiation in the category that you have to step above stains in order to break through,” Ms. Van Velsor said.
Introduced as the first liquid detergent in 1956, Wisk adopted the “Ring around the collar” slogan 12 years later. Early commercials featured housewives harangued by an unseen chorus of schoolchildren chanting “ring around the collar,” then noticing the stains on their husbands’ shirts. In the 1970s, an equally irritating parrot delivered the slogan.
Wisk was the top selling liquid detergent through the mid-1980s, when Tide introduced its first liquid version and overtook it. It has a 2 percent share of the liquid laundry detergent market, in contrast to Tide’s 38 percent share, according to SymphonyIRI Group, a market data company.
In a comparison of laundry detergents in the August issue of Consumer Reports, Wisk Deep Clean scored highest for top loaders, with 63 out of a possible 100, followed by Tide Plus Bleach Alternative and a Target store brand, which tied with 61 points. But Wisk was far from victorious at cash registers, with sales dropping 29.4 percent in the last year, in contrast to a 4.3 percent drop in sales for the liquid detergent segment over all, according to data for the 52 weeks ending Jan. 27 by SymphonyIRI.
Many consumers are migrating from liquid detergents to single-dose detergents, a new segment that is dominated by Tide Pods, with a 67.6 percent share of the $478.6 million segment, according to SymphonyIRI.
This month, Wisk introduced its own single-dose product, Wisk Deep Clean PowerBlasts, and in an e-mail, Ms. Van Velsor acknowledged that “2012 was a challenging year for Wisk,” but predicted that the new product and new campaign would reverse declines.
To help drive home the message that Wisk removes unseen perspiration from clothing, the brand has been handing out samples at gyms. In a promotion that began in January and runs through February, it will distribute more than 720,000 samples in about 700 gyms, primarily in eight cities including New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore.
“This year,” says one poster displayed at gyms that shows workout clothes spilling out of a duffel bag, “resolve to sweat fearlessly!”
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/15/business/media/wisk-campaign-takes-on-invisible-laundry-stains.html?partner=rss&emc=rss