Listerine Clean Start is an on-going mobile campaign featuring timely posts and mouth illustrations that remind people to rinse away the hateful expressions that they have said during specific events.

Mouth illustrations were created based on topical events and situations that generated hate and violent reactions on social media.

Each illustration was crafted to reflect specific situations, with unique characters and mouth designs. Each character talked about a personal moment of hate to created affinity with the reader. Plus, the copy was rendered in a handwritten style to further reflect the personal approach.

Each illustration started with the hate that needed to be rinsed, and ended with a call to refresh our ways and start clean.

Illustrations were created and posted on both Facebook and Instagram as “hateful” situations arose. All the posts and illustrations were aggregated on Instagram.

Some posts and situations were more relevant than others, thereby generating more organic and authentic reactions and shares.

For instance, the illustration titled “Daughter,” one of the posts for International Women’s Day, was viewed more than 120,000 times, and shared over 4,000 times, while generating organic conversations – all without any media boost or financial support from the Marketing team.

While the campaign may have helped raise further awareness and sales for the brand – and probably helped in making Listerine be seen as less clinical and functional – the ultimate goal of the campaign is to, in its own little way, help lessen the hate coming from people’s mouths; and encourage everyone to have a clean start.