From Akshay to SRK to Rohit Shetty, Harpic leans on stars to normalise toilet ads

New Delhi: Toilet-cleaning advertising in India has always had an awkward job. It has to sell a functional product, show visible proof, and still survive family viewing. 

Yet Reckitt’s toilet cleaner brand, Harpic, has spent years doing what few categories attempt: putting the bathroom on mainstream screens without turning viewers away.

Its latest move is to bring filmmaker Rohit Shetty on board as brand ambassador for New Harpic Bathroom Ultra Cleaner, which the company is calling its biggest innovation in bathroom cleaning in over a decade. 

The campaign line is, “Kaisa bhi ho daag, poora bathroom ULTRA saaf.”

Gautam Rishi, Marketing Director, Hygiene, Reckitt – South Asia, said, “This launch strengthens Harpic’s stain-removal leadership and raises the bar for bathroom hygiene. With Rohit Shetty onboard, we’re delivering a tougher, high-performance solution designed for Indian homes.”

The choice of Shetty fits the brand’s current direction. Harpic is leaning into “tough” language, high-decibel communicationuct demo playbook that Indian consumers recognise instantly. 

In the ad, Shetty links his own “style” and audience expectations to the brand’s promise of “solid safaai,” and positions the association around trust and repeat performance.

Anupama Ramaswamy, MD and Chief Creative Officer, Havas Creative India, the ad agency behind the ad, commented, “Harpic has a new hero in its universe - Harpic Bathroom Ultra Cleaner. It’s tough and effective. And that is why it needed a launch that is unmissable and larger-than-life, just like Rohit Shetty, who is the face of the brand.”

What stands out is not only the celebrity but also the way the category is being framed. Harpic’s pitch is built around real issues such as yellow stains, limescale and rust, and it directly calls out the household habit of using substitutes like detergent, bleach and phenyl. 

Harpic’s advertising has also mastered timing. Its spots are most visible in India’s high-attention hours, especially when the living room TV is on, and the household is together. That often means early mornings and prime time. It also means the slightly uncomfortable moment when a family sits down for dinner, and the ad break suddenly cuts to a gleaming toilet bowl and a stain-removal demo. The juxtaposition is exactly what makes the category tricky, and exactly what makes recall high.

Over the years, Harpic has used celebrity presence and simple lines to reduce the “ew” factor. 

The ads tend to avoid intimacy with the toilet, keep the language direct, and rely on transformation visuals. The objective is to make bathroom cleaning feel like routine home care, not a taboo topic.

In 2018, Harpic brought in Akshay Kumar as brand ambassador as part of a sanitation-led push, positioning him around its “Har Ghar Swachh” mission and building on hygiene behaviour change. 

The association ran for years and included multiple campaigns that stayed rooted in the idea of Harpic as the “specialist” solution in a crowded market.

In 2025, the brand switched gears on star power by signing Shah Rukh Khan and launching the “Harpic Hai Na” campaign, using reassurance as the central emotional idea. 

The line played like a household safety net, designed to feel like a simple promise rather than a chemical claim.

For bathroom cleaning, Harpic has also used regional or category-specific faces. In 2024, a Harpic Bathroom Cleaner campaign featured actor Karan Wahi in the North and Erode Mahesh in the South, anchoring the idea that a clean bathroom can set the tone for the day. 

Now, with Shetty, the brand is adding another kind of familiarity: a personality associated with mass entertainment, scale and “bigger-than-life” execution. 

Harpic’s advertising strategy in India has typically balanced three things.

First, it keeps the problem statement unmistakably Indian. Hard water marks, limescale and yellow stains are not abstract. They are visible, common, and instantly understood.

Second, it takes over mass screens, even at the risk of discomfort. The brand seems to bet that repetition beats awkwardness, and that a confident demo can normalise the subject.

Third, it uses celebrities as trust shortcuts. When a category is low-interest and slightly taboo, a recognisable face can reduce friction. 

Over time, Harpic has moved from sanitation advocacy to reassurance to “toughness remains the same: make the bathroom a normal conversation, and make the product the obvious choice.

Harpic’s India advertising has repeatedly leaned on familiar faces to make a “taboo” category feel normal and to make product claims feel credible.

One of the most recalled names from Harpic’s earlier high-frequency TV era is Hussain Kuwajerwala, who featured in older Harpic films that audiences still associate strongly with the brand. 

The fit was simple: a recognisable, family-TV face who could carry a straightforward demo without over-complicating the message.

Harpic also used Vishal Malhotra in its long-running “Door Step Challenge” style work, where the format itself does the heavy lifting by making the product claim look testable and public. 

The fit here was “relatable demonstratolay the role of the consumer’s proxy and making a specialist cleaner feel worth switching to.

In 2024, the brand brought in Mithali Raj for a “toilet review” framing, which borrows the language of standards, inspection and performance.

The fit is authority and credibility, especially when the brand is trying to dislodge detergent as a substitute and push “specialist” behaviour.

For its bathroom cleaner communication, Karan Wahi and Erode Mahesh were used for a region-split approach (North and South), with the campaign linking bathroom hygiene to how the day starts. The fit is everyday, accessible familiarity, plus local resonance for a mass category.

Then came the two big mass-market pivots. With Akshay Kumar, Harpic plugged into sanitation and behaviour change via “Har Ghar Swachh”, aligning the brand with hygiene advocacy and action-driven messaging.With Shah Rukh Khan, the brand shifted to reassurance-led storytelling through “Harpic Hai Na”, making toilet hygiene feel like a simple household certainty.

And now, with Rohit Shetty, the brand is clearly pushing “toughness” and high-performance cleaning, matching a mass-entertainment persona to a “big claim” product story for bathrooms that see hard stains and hard water.