2017 commended: Persil, purpose driven - case study

The problem: fading brand relevance was dragging down sales 97% of households in the UK use detergent, and the frequency of washing loads per household runs at one every other day.

And yet no one likes thinking about or doing the laundry; it’s a low interest category which to win in, brands have to somehow be salient and relevant.

Historically Persil had been very successful at this (so much so that as a teenager in the 1980s Victoria Beckham declared that she wanted to be "as famous as Persil Automatic").

And in the late 90s we achieved cultural relevance by disrupting the category (which focused on clothes which are whiter than white), with our belief that ‘Dirt is good’ and a mission to get kids playing more and getting dirty.