The Challenge
The global COVID-19 pandemic saw stocks of brand-name disinfectant flying off the shelves. For consumers in the US, the long-standing brand of choice is Lysol. For the UK, that brand is Dettol, a Reckitt brand.
As the world emerged from the restrictions of the pandemic and attitudes towards germs regressed closer to a pre-pandemic mean, disinfectant sales softened. Consumer psychology research suggested that without the consistent reminders about COVID, people were simply less worried about the impact of microbes in their daily lives. Dettol needed to make germs front and center in a way that would keep their products moving off the shelves.
The category leader, Dettol could increase category consumption and still profit without conceding market share. Our objective was simply to reframe how consumers thought about germs.
The Work
Through some robust behavioral frameworks developed over the course of the last decade or so, we were able to put the academic research on how consumers think about germs into a practical context for creating behavior change. The work outlined how people's perceptions of self and their need to think of themselves as clean and how that desire defined what messaging they would be receptive to.
Findings and Recommendations
Rationally, people understand that there are microorganisms all around them. But as any good student of human behavior will tell you, our rational self isn't always the one making the purchasing decisions. Our research revealed a critical insight in how people think about germs. While consumers are typically comfortable with an understanding that germs are all around them, they don't particularly like thinking about germs on themselves and in their private spaces.
This finding led us to a particularly powerful insight. Consumers rationalize their own cleanliness by default, but will readily accept that germs are everywhere. A campaign that brought the pervasiveness of external germs to consumers' lives, front doors, and homes would drive category demand and increase consumption of Dettol products in kind.
Our solution was to bring that invisible barrier that people imagine exists to the forefront of consumers' minds. Rather than challenging those natural perceptions about innate personal cleanliness, our work would emphasize real-life challenges to that sacred and imaginary barrier.
The Results
- A creative campaign that perfectly captures the motivations behind a purchase.
- Opportunities for Out of Home activations that optimize on context.