We live in an indifferent world, and Kleenex® can help fight that indifference. In the age of mobile devices, staring at our cell phones is easier than acknowledging each other’s needs—a fact that bothered our moms, who, during in-home interviews revealed to us that they worried about whether their children would develop enough empathy growing up in an online world.

These insights led to our big idea: People—and our target in particular—want to show they care, and Kleenex® could fill the gap. In an apathetic world, Kleenex® could be that human connection. Kleenex® could stand for empathy and help people fight indifference through a simple gesture of care. Our creative idea was: Kleenex® is a simple and universal gesture of care. This led to the creation of the tagline “Someone Needs One,” and an integrated, multichannel campaign.

Our “Careboard”—a custom billboard that utilized usable Kleenex® as pixels to form messages of care—allowed us to physically deliver Kleenex® at life-changing moments. We also created an online, digital Careboard.

We toured the country, filming 27 inspiring moments. By leveraging a first-to-market partnership with Facebook and using proprietary data, we tailored our messages to the right people at the right time. The video about Chance the disabled dog earned more than 60 million views. We closed the loop with a targeted banner ad.

Television reinforced our big idea on a larger scale.  

On the shelf, Kleenex® transformed its pocket packs and bundles into personalized gestures of timely care via on-pack stickers. We also implemented a complete consumer promotions calendar, including monthly national FSIs, digital coupons (iBotta, Coupons.com) and on-receipt offers (via Catalina).

Between 6/8/15 to 12/31/15, the campaign saw 606,026,418 impressions; 102,263,386 video views; 826k clicks to Kleenex.com.

Reach/Engagement: Kleenex® reached millions with its “Someone Needs One” campaign. From the June launch through the end of December, the 2015 program led to 59x (15.9MM) social engagements (shares, comments, likes, and clicks) vs. all of 2014 (270K).

Impact/Results: Kleenex® set out to increase the perception of Kleenex® as an emotional brand by 5% vs. previous year. According to post-campaign surveys conducted by Millward-Brown, “Kleenex® provides me a way to show others that I care” and “Kleenex® provides emotional comfort” were the top messages taken away from the 2015 campaign, an 8.5% increase and 103% increase respectively from the previous year.

Sales/Achievement against business targets: The goal was to grow Kleenex® sales by +0.6% while growing category share +0.3pt vs. previous year. Actual sales increased 5.1x vs. expectations (+3.0% vs. 2014), accounting for a 9.3x share gain vs. expectations (+2.8pt vs. 2014).