Glade creates air care products to scent your home. For years, their most popular US products are plug-ins, aerosols & candles - but lately, candles simply weren’t selling, especially with younger shoppers, leaving the brand sitting on shelves, undiscovered. We needed to save Glade Candles.

The issue was not the product: Glade takes fragrance seriously. The most elite fragrance houses in the world craft Glade scents.

The problem was their placement. Glade products are sold in the cleaning aisle beside brooms. And while older shoppers will buy plug-ins or aerosol in cleaning mode, younger shoppers buy candles in other aisles and moments – like décor, boutiques, and specialty stores.

Our Challenge: Glade’s lack of relevance has retailers questioning our role on the air care shelf. To change course, Glade needed to find a way to make candles viral – pulling new consumers into the air care aisle.

The Glade Dupe Detector is a unique mobile commerce experience that allows shoppers to take a photo or enter the URL of a luxury, or more expensive brand candle to detect if there is a duplicate or similar scented candle from Glade, at a better value.

Upon detection, Glade shares the dupe or a similar scented candle, along with where to purchase at retail.

We amplified the experience on social with 9 total influencers famous for dupe culture callouts to use our mobile experience and recommend Glade as a better value alternative.

Not only did we convert Gen Z candle lovers from more expensive dupes, we also saved them money on their purchase at retail without even giving them an offer.

As a brand that has been losing relevance with Gen Z, Glade needed to tap into their interests to make our idea breakthrough.

An interesting paradox was Gen Z’s views on luxury. While 49% of this generation likes luxury labels1, 46% believe dupes are more desirable than the real thing2.

This generation has become tired of consumer culture and luxury influencers influencing the things they should want. This has resulted in the rise of “de-influencing” – a trend where platforms like TikTok say what not to buy. Where spending more consciously is celebrated. And where brands being fully transparent about their lower-priced dupe status are flying into digital carts.

So instead of subscribing to ideals set by someone else, Glade had the opportunity to let Gen Z discover a smarter way to get luxe scents.

1 OMG Audience Profile: Specialty Purchasers

2 YPulse: The Dupe Mindset, North America Report, Nov2023

The Glade Dupe Detector mobile experience was built using our own fragrance matching matrix and AI to parse out hundreds of name brand luxury candles, their ingredients and scent families to determine which ones were replicas or similar to Glade candles – like Blue Capri Volcano at Anthropologie and our Coastal Sunshine Citrus Glade scent. Our technology also helped to determine what Glade fragrances to recommend if there wasn’t a close match.

To raise awareness of the Glade Dupe Detector mobile experience, we partnered with 9 influencers famous for dupe culture to share content of them using our mobile experience to scan or enter the URL of luxury candles to discover if they were dupes of Glade.

Our experience drove users to multiple retailers where they could purchase on our Glade candle recommendations. The campaign was amplified through social and retail media.

Glade buyers saved $33.6M dollars in the last month by purchasing our candles.

· Our campaign drove an increase in Sales: Glade Candles experienced a 5.4% increase sales vs. prior year, outperforming the overall Candles category, which experienced a 3.7% increase.

· Our campaign helped drive an increase in Gen-Z shoppers to our brand: In the first 2 weeks of the program, Glade Candles drove an increase in Gen-Z buyers (+1.0%) vs Prior Period when the overall category saw a -18.5% decrease in Millennial buyers.

· Our campaign drove an increase in Purchase Frequency: Glade Candles saw an overall increase of Product Trips per Buyer (+4.5%) vs Prior year when the overall category experienced -0.6% decrease.

· 9 Influencers with +219% Brand Engagement on Social (vs. campaign average)

Source: IRI Circana Panel, Total US- All Outlets, Data ending 4-21-2024.