Tide has been the leading laundry detergent for over 70 years, but detergent is a low involvement category, where the specter of commoditization looms large. The role and power of brands is constantly under attack from aggressive price promotions and look alike claims. Add to that the fact that Tide costs twice as much as its closest competitor - even when they aren’t offering deep discounts. To build emotional affinity, the brand is always looking for opportunities to connect with people in culturally relevant, meaningful ways. This is where the NFL comes in. Aside from the Super Bowl itself, NFL games consistently top the list of most watched TV programming in the country. The NFL engenders fearsome loyalty—people schedule their entire Sundays around the games. Our objective was to get people to engage with a laundry detergent during the NFL season.

We created a month-long debate over Laundry Night by pitting the NFL against NBC, America’s most iconic TV network— using the pop culture footprint of six different shows to shift the conversation form football to laundry. Week after week, different celebrities and players reacted to which night should be Laundry Night, from an official announcement from Peyton Manning, to a rap comeback by SNL’s Kenan Thompson and Melissa Villasenor. The NFL fired back with exclusive tubs of “Tuesday Tide PODS” to further encourage viewers not to do laundry on Sunday. The debate raged on for another two weeks with everyone from soap opera legends to WWE superstars weighing in.

Since everyone does laundry our target audience was broad, but we wanted to appeal to them in a way that made laundry exciting: through their favorite TV and NFL characters. To do so, we chose programs that hit every segment of people, from young to old, urban to suburban and more. The overarching media goal was to ensure Americans saw a piece of this campaign wherever they looked, from NFL games, to soap operas, on their Twitter feeds, Snap stories, or even in a WWE twitter thread. The massive scale of the campaign was necessary to break through the noise and educate the public about this debate, and it was successful, with Tide being mentioned five times more than any other brand through the flight of the campaign. Every time #LaundryNight appeared, it was accompanied by a Tide emoji so all conversations were attributed to Tide.

Laundry Night was a 4-week program that launched on NBC and broadcast TV, and expanded online on YouTube and social media including Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. In week 1, Peyton Manning declared Tuesday the official laundry night on behalf of the NFL. The Voice, a Tuesday night show, immediately fired back, prompting Peyton Manning to officially apologize and declare Thursdays laundry night instead. However, Thursday night show Superstore took umbrage, and the Laundy Night debate was officially on. Over the next 3 weeks stars from SNL, Days of Our Lives and players from the NFL all fought to protect “their” night of the week, using tactics from rap diss tracks to limited edition “Tuesday Tide PODS” giveaways.

Over the course of the campaign, Laundry Night garnered a total of 374 million earned media impressions across 75 pieces of media coverage. On social, fans didn’t just see the campaign, but interacted with it, making #LaundryNight the official hashtag of laundry - a topic that was immediately discussed 3x more than before with a 90% positive sentiment. Importantly, Tide was mentioned in the discussion 5x more than any other brand during Sunday Night Football, ensuring brand recognition and a 47% increase in sales.