Unilever has launched a significant multi-million-pound “Fast Just Got Better” marketing campaign[1] featuring the eight-time Olympic gold medallist coined ‘the world’s fastest man’, Usain Bolt, to showcase the new Persil Wonder Wash laundry detergent.
At the centrepiece of the campaign is a humorous TV advert where Usain Bolt shares his ‘fast’ lifestyle. He takes part in virtual reality running games, zooms around the local park on a hoverboard and visits the supermarket to purchase Persil Wonder Wash, with Bolt reiterating that “fast just got better”. The advert outlines the benefits of Persil Wonder Wash, a new laundry detergent specifically designed with cutting-edge technology to deliver outstanding performance even in a 15-minute cycle.
Breaking convention with typical laundry advertising, the creative moves away from focussing on dirty clothes and only shows a glimpse of a washing machine. This lifestyle-led approach is a contemporary approach to laundry marketing enabling Persil to resonate with a new and wider demographic of laundry users.
For the first time, Persil also plans to partner with more than 200 content creators for #CleanTok – one of the most popular hashtag on TikTok with 122 billion views – as part of the campaign inspiring other ‘cleanfluencers’ to put laundry front and centre on their feeds. Whilst previously laundry regimes have been difficult to bring to life on social media, the short cycle provides influencers with the ideal content inspiration to showcase the performance of Persil Wonder Wash.
In store, Persil is working with retailers to create unmissable moments for shoppers with Usain Bolt at the forefront, including front-of-store activations, home care aisle takeovers and engaging POS to communicate the brand’s key messages in an impactful way.
Nadine Slyper, marketing director at Unilever, said: “What better way to communicate our new short cycle laundry detergent than with the help of the world’s fastest man, Usain Bolt. Not only does partnering with an icon showcase and celebrate top performance, it also marks a wider step-change from other Persil campaigns. The creative for Persil Wonder Wash is significantly different from a typical laundry advert and reflects our new brand communications which champion the value of sport to unleash human potential.
“We know sport is engrained in our culture, and it provides the ideal way for us to communicate with multiple audiences via more engagement opportunities whilst demonstrating the superior performance of the product. This new campaign, alongside the recently launched ‘The Autograph’ featuring Arsenal forward Bukayo Saka, confirms there is no better home for embracing top performance than the world of sports as it gives us the opportunity to show our technical abilities on the toughest stains: mud, grass, blood and sweat.”
Persil Wonder Wash became available across grocery and convenience channels from April 2024.
