Woolite has a sweet heritage that would be the envy of others – fuzzy childhood memories of Mom and Grandma hand-washing their delicates, a gentle formula, the cute little hourglass bottle. Yet, in order to grow beyond its tiny marketshare, Woolite had to challenge the category leaders. It had to defy all category conventions, and, do so in a way that literally shocked not only the consumer, but the competition, reporters, the web, and the networks the world over.
We needed
a campaign
designed
to be bold,
anti-category.
We needed
a campaign
designed
to be bold,
anti-category.
Woolite Torturer Director’s Cut
Prior to the official launch of the campaign, we generated buzz for Woolite by creating a director’s cut of the film and sharing it exclusively with New York Times. The article, written by advertising columnist Stuart Elliot, generated 264,716,244 earned media impressions including Gawker, PerezHilton.com, Huffington Post, and Mashable.
Facebook likes jumped to 67,686, an increase of 200% and the online release received over 500,000 views in just over a week. We won a Silver Effie, beating our category leaders Febreze and Downy.
The campaign motivated Rob Zombie fans to hold up Woolite Complete instead of lighters at his first
post-campaign concert.