Unilever is putting Usain Bolt front and centre of Dirt Is Good, a multi-million pound marketing campaign to support the launch of its new Persil Wonder Wash product.
The Olympic icon will be the face of the campaign, which is set to run across TV, social, digital, OOH and point of scale formats.
Spotlighting the brand’s ‘fast just got better’ messaging and highlighting the detergent’s 15-minute wash cycle Bolt will feature in a hero film set to run across TV and online, showing him going about his fast-paced daily life.
He will also appear in a dynamic OOH campaign for the long-standing brand, which prompts commuters to think differently about using a short cycle setting on their washing machine.
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Running across both traditional and online channels, the campaign marks a departure for the traditionally TV-first brand, reflecting how the brand is continuing to reach younger audiences.
As part of spearheading the campaign Unilever brand Persil will also partner with more than 200 #CleanTock creators, inspiring cleanfluencers to put laundry front and centre in their work.
It comes as part of the brand’s new ‘Play On’ strategy which leverages sport to champion the values of growth, resilience and potential and highlight how making laundry as effortless as possible can help people achieve their goals.
“We created Wonder Wash, our biggest innovation in a decade, to harness the fastest-growing consumer laundry behaviour- short cycle washing – so the campaign needed to be unlike anything we’ve ever done before,” said Dirt is Good marketing vice president Tati Lindenburg.
“From the start to the finish line, the brief was about landing ‘fast’ across all communications, and who better than Usain Bolt, the world’s fastest man to help convey this,” she continued.
“This new campaign, alongside the recently launched ‘The Autograph’ featuring Arsenal forward Bukayo Saka, confirms there is no better hope for embracing top performance than the world of sports as it gives us the opportunity to show our technical abilities on the toughest stains: mud, grass, blood and sweat.”
