• by Karl Greenberg , January 9, 2008

Procter & Gamble is launching the second ad push for its two-year-old, direct-application dish soap, Dawn Direct Foam. The campaign, which comprises TV, print ads, PR and interactive elements launching this week, includes an online promotion tied to football bowl season.

Dawn brand is asking consumers to share their dirty dishes, literally, as part of a campaign touting Dawn Direct Foam as a more powerful alternative to liquid soaps for those who wash dishes by hand. The company's pitch: Dawn Direct Foam can clean a sink full of dishes with one application of foam.

The football-themed leg of the campaign features Pat Smith, wife of NFL player Emmitt Smith, in an Internet promotion asking consumers to upload photos of their messiest dishes to CondeNet's Epicurious.com for a chance to win such prizes as a 50-inch flat screen TV, $500, and a year-supply of Dawn Direct Foam.

Smith will be featured in videos on the site, explaining the intricacies of hosting game parties. The site will also have Dawn Direct Foam brand positioning on other football-season entertaining content, as well. The effort is via Grey, N.Y.

The TV spot, via N.Y.-based Kaplan Thaler Group, broke New Year's Eve. The spot shows a series of perilously full sinks. Sponges beside each sink express, through voiceover, disbelief that one application of soap could do the job. A woman demonstrates. Tagline: "Get Dawn and Get Done."

A P&G spokesperson says the larger effort for Dawn Direct Foam will run for several months, with the online promotion kicking off this week and culminating with the Super Bowl. The company will also drop off several hundred samples to bloggers nationwide.

"We have been doing more and more alternative marketing approaches," says the spokesperson, adding that last summer's launch of Dawn Simple Pleasures, which paired the Dawn decanter with an air freshener, included no TV at all. "It was done solely with print, some interactive, and through placement in traditional media, bloggers, and through word of mouth." He says the company is exceeding sales projections for the product.

P&G is targeting Dawn Direct Foam to consumers in their 20s to mid-30s, who favor direct-application hand-washing to the old-fashioned method of filling a sink with water, squirting in soap, and doing the dishes tub style.