aka Andy McLane
Persil wanted a new way of selling soap powder. Surely everything had been done before. How could you connect with Mums to let them know that Persil non-bio was the best way of getting their kids clothes, but the gentlest on young skins?
The brief was pretty open ended. How do you come up with a new way to sell washing powder? Knowing that the audience for Persil Non Bio is Mums – as kids often have delicate skin – I played around with a few off the wall ideas.
One stuck. The idea that allowing kids to be free to get dirty resonated with the client and the public. We represented kids as playful ‘little monsters’. And we launched it with the idea of collecting tokens for art materials for play groups. At the same time all the artistic kids in the UK could make a contribution to getting their art famous and into the Guinness book of records – as a part of the BIG MUMMY collage that was exhibited in trafalgar Square. The work got into the Guinness book of records and won a DMA Gold and the ‘DIRT IS GOOD’ positioning continues to inform the work years later, even though Persil have passed through many an agency with this thought.
Here’s a video of the gigantic mosaic being prepared:
