Launched over a century ago, Lysol had earned its way into households all over the world with a promise to kill 99.9% of germs.

But after spending decades reinforcing its germ-kill credentials, the brand was increasingly perceived as harsh and old fashioned, and momentum was slowing. In a world where germ-kill was becoming overkill, 99.9% was only wanted .1% of the time.

But behind that 99.9% was something much more emotional and meaningful. After all, the only thing stronger than our products were the moms who were using them. If our strength is 99.9%, then the strength of a mom is 100%, all day, everyday.

After all, when we conducted a global study surveying 10,000 respondents in 29 markets, there was one thing moms everywhere agreed on: the #1 thing they want to protect is their children.

Protection is instinctual. It’s the reason the mama bear metaphor exists. But protection isn’t just what moms do. It’s what Lysol does. So we created a fully-integrated campaign, reimagining moms as their animal counterparts, to celebrate the fierce instinct that Lysol shares with every single one of them – to Protect Like a Mother.

As a result, we were able to:

• Drive sales across key markets: we turned a -12% loss in dollar sales volume for our flagship product into a +3.4% gain in the U.S., boosted sales of critical portfolios in the U.K., and turned a -2% sales decline in Germany into a +3.5% gain.

• Make our work work harder: we increased ROI in the U.K. by 26% vs. the previous campaign, more than doubled our ROI in Germany, and in addition to increasing ROI by 33% in the U.S. for our flagship product, we reversed our penetration decline from -2% to nearly +2%.

• Shift perceptions of the brand globally: we increased product recommendation scores by +6% in Germany among our core target, while increasing our brand equity measure, “brand for me”, in the US by +4% vs. year ago, and in the UK +9% vs. year ago.

Finally, we proved that no one’s stronger than a mother – just like nothing’s stronger at killing germs than Lysol.