In 2018 Maytag, the erstwhile appliance category leader, was looking at steady year-on-year declines in sales and brand equity. A few decades of resting on its laurels, and dramatic decrease in brand investment, had squandered the equity that had been more than a century in the making.

Maytag was now seen as a tired, old-fashioned brand with products that were behind the times. Maytag used superior quality as a point of differentiation brought to life in the longstanding Maytag Repairman campaign, but thanks to the influx of high-tech and high-spend brands like Samsung and LG, dependability had become commoditized and consumers were captivated instead by flashy LED screens and haptic feedback buttons.

We needed to reframe Maytag’s Dependability into something appealing, something – sexy, and to remind people that ultimately when they buy an appliance they’re entering a long-term relationship – and long-term relationship criteria is different than something disposable.

To make an unconventional splash during the Black Friday sales period, we hijacked one of the year’s biggest conversations about sex appeal, connecting personal affinity for the ‘Man’ to love for the Maytag brand, overturning category conventions and expectations by connecting the idea of dependability to sex appeal.

We partnered with PEOPLE Magazine to announce Maytag Man as the Sexiest Appliance Alive with a 2-page integrated spread incorporating Sexiest Man Alive editorial design elements and using a Sexiest Man Alive celebrity photographer.

We knew we had a secret weapon to help people connect to Maytag – the Maytag Man. No other appliance brand had a human face or a spokesperson, much less a ‘man’. Moreover, social chatter told us that people found the Maytag Man sexy – and that connection gives people a human connection to the Maytag brand no other appliance manufacturer can match.

We saw an opportunity in PEOPLE Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive (SMA) issue, a pop culture fixture that gives people permission to indulge in conversation about male sex appeal. Millennial readers spend an average of 78 minutes reading PEOPLE’s SMA issue — and our audience over-indexes on PEOPLE.

During PEOPLE’S Sexiest Man Alive announcement, we announced Maytag as the Sexiest Appliance Alive.

We seamlessly integrated with PEOPLE’s announcement and activation. Wherever PEOPLE revealed their news, we revealed ours.

We ran a 2-page print spread in PEOPLE magazine disguised as an editorial, immediately following John Legend’s article.

We followed PEOPLE’s tweets and Instagram stories with ours.

Homepage and first-impression takeovers ran on PEOPLE.com.

We ran our news on a Times Square digital billboard.

We distributed paid and organic content across social channels while conducting a week-long social listening activation.

The Maytag Man instigated and won PRWeek’s “Battle of the Brands Sexiest Mascot” Twitter poll.

The Sexiest Appliance Alive campaign created Maytag exposure and made Maytag talkable.

160 million impressions across paid and earned media channels

+15 point lift in “dependability” brand attribute

424x increase of overall social mentions

87% positive sentiment on social media