Air Wick launched in 1943 as a home fragrance brand in the United States. But despite this history the brand has never defined an ownable position in the minds of U.S. consumers.

The "air care" category has historically been driven by innovation lacking a point of view on the role of their products in people's lives. Messaging has been caught in an endless cycle of new gadget one-upmanship, and ategory clichés.

After several consecutive years of innovation misses, the brand had lost both sales and share, and recognized that innovation alone would not build enduring equity, increase loyalty or provide the foundation for steady future growth.

We'd have to develop a unique purpose for Air Wick that could build equity beyond individual products and become the foundation for future launches in a category where our share of voice was in the single digits.

Diving deep into the lives our audience we unearthed the truth that for our audience is just one of many tools she uses in the process of home creation, just like paint on the walls or pillows on the couch. Talking to thinkers and cultural influencers we uncovered the realization that scent, at its most primal level, is a silent, invisible communicator and can help us say what we want to say, and make life feel how we want it to feel.

We brought this insight to life through a campaign with two distinct stages. Stage I became the emotional expression of our strategy. To introduce this idea, we launched with a powerful short film about a serviceman and father stationed overseas whose family, with the help of Air Wick, captures the scents, and therefore the feeling of home.

Stage two focused on Air Wick's new Life Scents products, complex multidimensional scents that have the power to send messages and unlock memories. By embedding product messages within a larger POV on scent we made them living proof of Air Wick's philosophy and expertise.

The results re-energized the brand.

We changed the conversation by triggering a very emotional response in our viewers as evidenced in by our impact in the media, social media and testing results, we drove up functional and emotional brand image attributes and even changed the language of how people talk about Air

Wick.

Most importantly, we made Life Scents on of Air Wicks' greatest successes in living memory doubling goals and far outpacing the competition with a budget smaller than theirs and a price higher than for previous products. We also drove up loyalty measures, showing that this category

isn't just about passing product fads.

By breathing fresh air into the category we restored the brand to growth and gave it fresh momentum, and, for the first time, a unique and emotional position in the minds of its audience.