• Ad Age, Friday, February 10, 2006 11:30 AM

It took five years of research and effort that even included practically living with consumers for an entire week, but Procter and Gamble and ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi finally came up with a new umbrella campaign for Tide, one of the company’s oldest, most enduring brands.  The effort is called the “Tide knows fabrics best” campaign, and it recalls the claims of past P&G advertising, but with a twist. Its music, rich visual imagery and emotional benefits break from the demonstrations and side-by-side comparisons that have filled the void since the brand’s long-running “Family Tide” campaign ended in 2001. But getting there wasn’t easy.  As part of the research that went into the campaign, executives from P&G and Saatchi spent a week with consumers in Kansas City, Mo., and Charlotte, N.C., going to work, movies, dinner, manicurists--even gambling together. “We got to an incredibly deep and personal level,” said Julie Woffington, Tide's North American associate marketing director. “We wanted to understand the role of laundry in their life. And it’s really not a huge role like it was in the 1950s.”  P&G managers also spent a day running errands and buying groceries for consumers--on the consumers’ budget--just before seeing the campaign ideas for the first time, Woffington said, “so we could really get it in mind that maybe Tide and laundry aren’t the most important things on [the consumer’s] mind.”

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