• by Aaron Baar , October 7, 2014

The word “chore” brings to mind many different adjectives, almost none of them positive. As a brand often linked to the drudgery of housework, Whirlpool is looking to change people’s thinking about the everyday effort they make to keep families running.

The new effort, from DigitasLBi, uses the line “Every day, Care,” to express that even the most seemingly insignificant chores play a huge role in shaping society and future generations. 

“These acts of everyday care have more power than we, as a society, give them credit for,” Jon Hall, senior brand manager for Whirlpool, tells Marketing Daily. “At the core [of this campaign is], ‘Every chore is an act of love.’”

The effort launches this week with a new 60-second television commercial depicting people and families in their everyday lives, getting ready for school and work, caring for bumps and bruises, washing pets, having father-son heart-to-hearts, as a voiceover says: “Every act of care counts. From the grand gestures to the tiniest looks.” The scenes continue with families bonding over dinner, making messes while playing and even getting into squabbles. “The fun ones. The messy ones. The endless ones,” says the voiceover, as the scenes shift to doing laundry, making meals and changing soiled sheets. “If it comes from care, it counts. Because every act of care we give, helps the people we love become the people who love,” concludes the voiceover, as Johnny Cash quietly sings, “You Are My Sunshine.”

“We know that [chores] are oftentimes tedious and mundane and boring and there’s not a lot of thanks behind them,” Hall says. “If we can get families thinking about what chores really are — families caring for each other — then we can change the perception of the category.”

The idea of changing perceptions extends into a robust digital effort, which includes a microsite that details some of the ways everyday chores help society as a whole (such as clean clothes tied to lower truancy rates or family dinners leading to better reading skills). The Web site content will be updated regularly to show the value of everyday chores as part of its “Every Day, Care Project,” which tracks people’s own testimonials via Twitter and will include other partnerships for Whirlpool, Hall says. 

“We exist to help families thrive,” he says. “All of our products are inspired by helping families care.”

The effort, the brand’s largest to date, is meant to move away from the technical-focused ads that dominate the category to get at the underlying benefit those products bring, Hall says. 

“The industry is all talking about the same thing. It’s a sea of technological sameness out there,” he says. “We’re coming at this with a different point of view.”