Q] Tell us a bit about your latest campaign - #TideforTime. How well was it received by consumers?
The pandemic has hit the world hard. With people confined to their home, without any doubt the workload in the house has increased. Our research tells us that household work during the pandemic has increased by over 29%. This has had a big impact on consumers. A recently conducted survey revealed that 77% of consumers believe that balancing housework and office work has led to them spending less time with family, and that 8 out of 10 consumers wish they had more time in the day. In fact, households spend over 300 hours every year doing laundry. So Tide For Time is a movement that was born out of these conversations that we were hearing from consumers. We realised that time today is undervalued and taken for granted. It’s almost considered a free resource. So by shining the light on this issue, we wanted to create a platform for conversations around the importance of time. And offer Tide as a solution, because using Tide can save up to 40% of laundry time. So that’s really the objective. So, consumers are responding very well to the movement and we have seen over 20 million views in the last couple of days. Multiple celebrities and influencers have joined the conversation organically.
Q] Tide recently conducted a survey in partnership with Toluna. What insights have you gained from it, and how do you plan to use these in your future marketing activities?
We have multiple ways in which we collect consumer insights. Brand service is one such method that you mentioned, the insight has been very consistent with a qualitative understanding and remarkable additional insights on what consumers are feeling one year into the pandemic. Overall, there was this feeling of being overwhelmed with the increase in household work. 78% of parents agree that they have less time now to meet or talk to friends and family. 80% think their parents feel lonely as they’re not able to talk to them enough. We found that 77% of people feel that balancing housework and office work led to them spending less time with family during COVID. When we dug a bit deeper, we also learned that consumers felt that the time of a homemaker is often undervalued. And if a homemaker were to make choices to save time, they are made to feel guilty. So, Tide for Time aims to spark conversations around these issues.
ABOUT THE BRAND
P&G serves consumers in India with a comprehensive portfolio of brands including Vicks, Ariel, Tide, Whisper, Olay, Gillette, AmbiPur, Pampers, Pantene, Oral-B, Head & Shoulders and Old Spice. P&G operates through three entities in India of which two are listed on NSE and BSE. The listed P&G entities are: ‘Procter & Gamble Hygiene & Health Care Limited’ and ‘Gillette India Limited’.
FACTS
Creative agency: Leo Burnett India
Media Agency: MediaCom
Digital Agency: Kinnect Media
PR Agency: Genesis BCW
PROFILE
As the Chief Marketing Officer & Vice President, Fabric Care, P&G India, Sharat Verma leads the brand function and the fabric care business in India since 2019. Having joined P&G in 2004, Verma has over his tenure worked in various leadership positions across business units and geographies like India, ASEAN and China.
MARKETING TIP
The more you keep the consumer at the centre, the better outcomes you’ll get from your marketing investment.
Q] Tide also partnered with NASA recently and is all set to design the first laundry detergent for space. Tell us a bit about your association with NASA and what was thought behind the move?
So currently, there is no viable way to do laundry in space. Astronauts on the International Space Station wear clothing several times before replacing it with a new set, so really, they don’t wash. Clothing is delivered to the space station through resupply shipment. It is a very expensive process. Over 70 kg of clothing per crew member is sent up into space so that astronauts can have a change of clothes. A round trip mission could be multiple years in length. So just imagine the amount of resources you’re spending in supplying clothing. Therefore the partnership came out of that. We have developed a fully biodegradable detergent, specifically designed for use in space to solve cleanliness and stain removal problems for washable items during deep space missions while also being compliant with NASA guidelines, and being suitable for closed loop water purification processes NASA has on spaceships. We’re very eager to reapply some of the learnings from this partnership with NASA and the International Space Station National Lab to Tide on earth, and we’re also developing a low resource laundry solution for everyday use.
Q] With Digital becoming a big part of marketing post COVID, what are some of the innovations and avenues you are using on Digital? What formats are you exploring?
Consumers reward brands that have superior performance. Therefore, our task at P&G is to communicate our superiority in a meaningful and engaging way, which is useful and interesting for the consumer. From a media standpoint, we want to be where the consumer is, as consumers have been more at home, so we are spending more on relevant, yet scalable mediums. We’ve increased digital spends, reduced wastage, but always kept the guiding light of efficiency as we made those shifts. We are careful to not increase ad load on consumers and always find ways to keep our advertising useful and interesting for consumers. That’s the only way for brands to find a cut through the ad clutter that consumers face each day.
