• by Nina Lentini , Staff Writer @Nina_Lentini, September 26, 2018

Sacha Connor, director of marketing, Clorox, interviewed by MediaPost’s Sara Guaglione

Sara: What were the challenges?

Sacha: We are an 89 year old brand. Lived in pine forest. In 1990, Clorox acquired the brand, launched national ad campaign. Pine-Sol lady. We are the No. 1 in our category. But category was declining, consumers moving to moire convenient cleaners. Gen Y moving into young family life stage, kids under 12, lots of messes. Consumers seeing it as a product for their mom or grandmom. My team had to think about how to reframe from functional to something more human centric, purposes driven, started with brand purpose. Champions the heart and hustle of doers. 

Sara: Goal behind campaign?

Sacha: Goal was relevancy. Insight was around that Saturday clean that still happens. Around 90% will say music can make cleaning more enjoyable. On top, YouTube clips catching cleaners dancing to music. Led us to brand campaign that FCB presented, Clean Your Way. Celebrating unique ways doers clean. 

As CPG marketers, looked at play book, great shoot captured instore, TV, social assets. Byron, great dancer, very flexible. Pine-Sol’s YouTube channel.

Sara: Consumer insights to ensure campaign would be effective?

Sacha: One step further to actually engage with consumer instead of having one way conversation. Wanted to engage Millennial. Experiment to tap into influencers and make them partners. With YouTube. Approach was different. Not one shot deal, take content and repurpose it.

Execution

Sacha: Saw Anana at the beginning, worked with Heaven King, video. Step 1: ID talent, first, fit with brand, used brand. Number of subscribers and were they increasing. Good fit with key demo, multicultural brand. Someone who could actually dance. My ego took a big hit. Great agency, we picked our top couple, when they saw it was PineSol, they didn’t want to work with the brand. 

Sara: benchmark of followers/subscribers? Looking at all factors, more of micro to macro influencer. Separate search for micro influencers.

Sacha: Step 2. Letting go. Of creative control. Giving freedom within a framework. Uncomfortable place for CPG marketers. Concept of short shorts, high heels and dancing ... hmmm. Had to let influencer but need to have contracts tied up nice and tight. How many posts will they do, how many edits can you do of their content.

Step 3. Launch plan. Created shorter edits for paid media. played around with sequencing. Had contest to drive people to our website, getting activation at retail. 

Step 4. Optimize. We wanted to double down on content length. Shorter was better. First five second have organiz branding. Swapping out low performing content with higher performers. 

Results

Sacha: It was an experiment that exceeded all expectation. Organic engagement. Anana has 5 million views, 3 million subscribers and that’s what we were looking for, more views than subscribers. We had 1.3 million views in 72 hours. Looked at sentiment. YouTube was able to pull sentiment score from likes, comments, replies. Paid content, KPI brand consideration. Surpassed goal. Paid influencer saw a 12% consideration lift. Byron 6% lift. CPG average is 5 to 6%. View-through rates. How many completed video, very high. 30 - 40%. Audience retention longer than average.

Site traffic: made sure we were driving people from influencer content to our brand site, dedicated landing page, drive to coupon, 40% increase in traffic.

Key takeaways

• 1. Find the right talent fit.

• 2. Release some creative control.

• 3. Create a strong launch plan: Use the influencxer’s channels, your owned channels and paid media; integrate into your broader brand campaign.

• 4. Optimize