With #TideforTime our objective was to make Tide synonymous with saving time: P&G India's Sharat Verma

“The functional communication continues to establish our product’s superiority. But with #TideforTime our objective was to bring out a larger life benefit and make Tide synonymous with saving time,” said Sharat Verma, Chief Marketing Officer and Vice President, Fabric Care at P&G India, speaking to BestMediaInfo.com with regard to their latest campaign.

Through the campaign the laundry brand has raised an important question – ‘Are we spending our time on what’s really important?’ Based on the insight of how families spend up to 300 hours every year hand-washing clothes, the brand urges people to ‘Put Tide to work, make time for life!’

“We realise that time is often undervalued and almost considered to be a free resource. However, consumers feel that if they had more time they would spend it on things they really want to do versus what they have to do- household chores. So the idea behind this campaign was to start conversations around this,” he said.

The other insight that consumers felt is that homemakers' time is often undervalued and there's a perception that their time is unlimited. “If a homemaker makes choices to save time, they are made to feel a bit guilty about it. It is impossible to progress without changing perceptions around time. Homes today are increasingly becoming faster and more efficient with microwaves, electric kettles, toasters, washing machines. However, there's still some social pressure that's holding us back. Even in households that have washing machines, 40% of the loads are still washed by hand. Whereas you can get hand-wash-like clean clothes in a washing machine if you use the right detergent,” he said.

The brand claims that the detergent helps save up to 40% of the time spent on doing laundry. Through the campaign, they elevate the importance of time and urge consumers to spend the time saved on things that really matters to them.

“Tide believes that everyone's time is precious and they should be able to spend it on things they want to do. The brand’s purpose is to make every day brighter for our consumers and lighten their load. So this is a movement to start a conversation and engage consumers on a subject that they care about,” he added.

The film:

This campaign is quite different from the usual Tide ads that focus on the features of the product and its ability to provide superior whiteness to clothes. Unlike the ‘Chaunk Gaye’ ads, this one works on the emotional quotient. It also raises a pertinent issue, that of time spent on household chores, and makes the audience pause to think and create conversation on it.

The brand believes that the best way to break through the clutter of ads today is to use their voice for good causes. “We want to have conversations on the world stage that break bias and stereotypes. People today really want to know the values behind the brands they buy. 80% of consumers say they are more loyal to purpose-driven brands and more than 60% would choose or switch brands based on their stand on social issues or environment. Focusing on purpose-led advertising is not just the right thing to do for society, but also the right business choice. Consumers today have a strong point of view and expect their brands to do the same. Nine out of 10 consumers feel better about brands that support social causes. Purpose helps us connect with consumers on shared values,” Verma said.

For the last five years, P&G has been raking a similar conversation through Ariel’s #SharetheLoad campaign as well. Through four chapters and consistent efforts, the brand brought to the fore a reality that many fail to acknowledge in their own homes- of unequal distribution of household chores. The campaign highlighted the impact of unequal division of chores on women’s well-being and urged the men to share the load. Tide’s this campaign also intends to be a movement that raises a similar conversation.

P&G is paying special focus to gender equality in the division of household chores and they reflect it in all their brand communications. The new Tide campaign film also sees both the parents doing the laundry. “We live by those values across brands. Therefore even in Tide advertising, we always show men and women doing laundry. Any advertising on Tide, most often you will find men doing laundry because we feel that there is a little bit of work to be done to be able to unwind years of conditioning that consumers have gone through,” he added.

He said that P&G is investing in gaming platforms across some of their relevant brands as consumers have taken to gaming. “We want to always be where the consumer is. We moved our money out of the outdoors and spent it more on relevant scalable touchpoints. We've had an increase in e-commerce and an increase in digital content consumption and we're driving investment in these touchpoints. Our increase in digital spend and reduction in wasted frequency is the result of what consumers are telling us. So we want to make sure that we don't unnecessarily increase the ad loads on consumers.”

Speaking on the marketing trends in the FMCG category, Verma said, “The ad load on the consumers has gone up to about 5000 to 8000 ads per day. Meanwhile, the attention span has also gone down to about eight seconds. We believe that to be able to cut the clutter we need to say something that is interesting and useful for the consumer. This is even more apparent during the pandemic where people are really stressed for time.”

Info@BestMediaInfo.com