A bold campaign for toilet-cleaning products from chemical company Henkel has left the faces of women shoppers, well, flushed—and in doing so captured the 2014 Caples Courageous Client award. For the second time, a chemical company featured a group of handsome crooners in its latest digital marketing campaign—the members of the Balls Dream Band serenaded female shoppers in campaign, “Flush to Paradise.” Ladies who simply went to use a mall restroom were asked to pull a lever before using the facilities. What they got was the surprise of a lifetime. The ceiling and walls moved out of the way to reveal an earthly paradise with dreamy singers, lush plants, and of course Henkel cleaning products presented to the ladies by the handsome boy band members.
Henkel set out to engage its target sweet spot—women between 25 and 50 years old—who hadn’t bought Bref or any other WC toilet cleaner. The digital campaign had a number of moving parts: guerrilla marketing that converted the restroom into an earthly paradise, hidden cameras to record the video and share it on various media platforms, and bloggers who would blast it to their audiences.
“Flush to Paradise” has its own YouTube channel which was localized in each market with varied languages and cultural nuances. On this digital channel viewers found new, enriched content to share via other social networks.
The video had more than 8,000,000 views on YouTube in just over four weeks. More than 75% of those viewers watched to the end, showing real engagement. In all, the campaign was disseminated across more than 400 media platforms and blogs around the world.
