Ideas We Love: Listerine’s Deep Clean 🧼🏛️✨

Issue Number 26: Listerine deep-clean decades of grime from historic landmarks in series of satisfying social videos

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Aug 01, 2024

A spate of holidays at IWL towers is making it tricky to curate and create IWL💕 at the moment, but something Matt bumped into in the wild recently on the news during a trip to see his brother up in Edinburgh is the subject of today’s post.

An idea, that for those who’ve either done a bit of jet-washing in their time, or might be partial to the “satisfying” genre that’s so popular across social media and YouTube; could be right up your street as well.

The Idea. Listerine “Deep cleaning” Landmarks 🧼 🏛️✨

In partnership with Secret London & Glasgow, mouthwash brand Listerine undertook the task of deep cleaning Bermondsey’s Town Hall & Glasgow’s historic Mitchell Library.

The videos capture workers, akin to dental hygienists, blasting away decades of grime across multiple days to reveal each building's original splendour.

Why We Love This Idea 💕

A product truth, well told 🎭

In a world where many health and beauty brands have yinged towards acts in culture with trending collaborators to drive cut through and conversation - Listerine have yanged, showing how a simple product truth, in this case “deep cleaning” can help a brand synonymous with cleanliness, extend its commitment in a memorable way.

A “Sticky” content format 📱

The cleaning process captured on camera, is all-things mesmerizing and gratifying, thumb-stopping and sticky - thus will have a high view-through rate, duration and completion rate - combining to create a good “quality score” within the algorithms that are serving it - hence is a content format that by design will end up being seen by more people relative to standard branded content arcs.

A creative act, with modern media savvy.

Novel and newsworthy 🗞️

The “execution” here, cleaning a historic landmark (that much like teeth and gums come with decades of grime) is something that will naturally get reporters hands on keyboards. However there’s only so many times reporters might cover repeat acts.

The “idea” of deep-cleaning however, is a play that can be scaled and repeated across all sorts of other things that could do with a clean-up depending on where you might point it hence…

…What We’d Love to Do with It 🧼✨

The point of this section is to show what we might do with this idea, free from the shackles of budgets, legals, approvals and especially in this case brand tone of voice playbooks.

So where and what else might you do a clean-up or associate with deep-cleaning.

CleanTube 🧽 🎥

The first thought that comes to mind is a media-shaped one.

When people are watching this genre, contextual placements can remind people that watching a deep-clean is great, but there’s nothing more satisfying than a deep-clean in, around and below the gumline. We can’t imagine it’s a hugely competitive set of keywords, hence will be relatively cost efficient and contextually relevant.

Depending on the size and associated cost of showing up across “CleanTube” in different markets, Listerine could drop in a few more acts of peak cleansing of their own to take things up a level like these initial stunts in Bermondsey & Glasgow that might extend to create a swarm of “Banksy’s with Karchers” that give grimy spaces a glow-up in the night, with nothing but a purple plaque to show for it - thus not only advertising within the genre but contributing to it and even elevating it.

Bonza.

Not-so explicit playlists ⚠️ 🎧🎬🍿

Now we fully admit we haven’t done the diligence of sizing “CleanTube” relative to other algorithmic rabbit-holes - but it’s a safe bet there are some other genres that most likely dwarf it in size, scale and cultural significance that a brand of Listerine’s size might want to show up in and associate with.

With that in-mind why not create “Not-So-Explicit” Playlists. Working with rights owners to clean-up and create playlists of iconic songs and movies the whole family can enjoy without worrying about fruity language or awkward sex scenes - freeing parents up from endless repeats of Disney’s finest. You’d need to do it in a non-naff way, but could see how it would get pick-up from journos and family-bloggers.

“Wash ya marf aaart ya filthy animal”

Last-up might be some more contextual plays with a topical twist, where timely ads are placed alongside coverage of famous individuals who have sworn on TV, made false statements, engaged in misconduct or just had memorable slip-ups.

With messages along the lines of “Cleaning mouths since 1879” or “Next time clean with Listerine”

By leveraging moments like these that are playing out in-public, Listerine could deliver memorable, contextually relevant ads that resonate with audiences and reinforce their commitment to cleanliness.

All of the above showing how Listerine might take the concept of deep-cleaning beyond the mouth and into different parts of pop-culture in disruptive ways.

If You Like This Idea, You’ll Love…

If you love a dramatic demonstration of a product truth, that leans into a bit of lateral thinking here’s 16 others to chew on from nice ads to lovely uses of a medium.

From OOH to packaging to the supply chain and everything in-between.