Proctor & Gamble Announces Innovative New Laundry Product (NYSE: PG)

Proctor & Gamble plans to spend an estimated $150 million on an extensive marketing campaign to persuade consumers to try a new type of laundry product.  The new laundry product is sold in single-use tablets, called pods, that combine liquid detergent, stain remover, and brightener.  The pods are being introduced under the Tide brand banner.

Tide Pods will be priced between regular Tide liquid and a more expensive variety known as Tide Total Care.  Executives at Procter are confident that the benefits offered by Tide Pods will outweigh reservations about cost.  Tide is the country’s best-selling detergent.

Sundar Raman, marketing director for North American fabric care at Procter in Cincinnati, said, “We want to shake this category up with innovation.  What you’re going to see from us is a little more risk-taking.” He added that the goal is to disrupt the routine habits of consumers who “automatically pick up the product they usually pick up” when shopping for laundry detergent.

The Tide Pods advertising campaign will appear in traditional, digital, mobile, and social media, as well as in stores.  Print ads will include QR, or quick response, codes that can be scanned to retrieve information about Tide Pods.  The campaign has a cheery, youthful attitude that is meant to emphasize the differences between Tide Pods and traditional detergents.

The commercials feature a remixed version of “Pop Goes the World,” a song by Men Without Hats originally released in 1987.  Attractive models are shown coming out of washers in fashionable outfits after joining the pod squad.  The colorful campaign will carry the theme “Pop in. Stand out,” playing upon multiple meanings of “pop,” as in making colors pop with brightness or popping a pod into a washer.

Tide Pods follows a trend that has been gaining traction in the marketing of household brands.  Procter, Clorox, Reckitt Benckiser, and Unilever have been attempting to continually deliver distinctive new products that pique the curiosity of high-technology savvy consumers.  Procter is the nation’s largest maker of packaged goods.

Posted by Toi Williams on 28 Feb 2012. Filed under Headlines, Lifestyle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.