Tide: It's A Tide Ad
Tide and Saatchi & Saatchi New York needed to dominate the Super Bowl conversation and drive sales for Tide Ultra Oxi. Facing a cluttered media environment and the 'Tide Pod Challenge' controversy, they aimed to re-center the brand on its core cleaning benefit for a mass audience of sports fans.
Creative Idea
Claimed every Super Bowl commercial featuring clean clothes was actually a Tide ad.
Tide hijacked the Super Bowl by parodying common advertising tropes, claiming that because every commercial features impeccably clean clothes, every ad is actually a Tide ad. This turned the entire broadcast into a giant, meta product demonstration.
How David Harbour Hijacked the Super Bowl
The Rod Serling of Laundry
To execute this meta - narrative, Saatchi & Saatchi NY cast David Harbour as a "Twilight Zone" style narrator. Director collective Traktor and cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema (known for *Oppenheimer*) used specific lighting rigs and vintage soft - filters to meticulously mimic the aesthetics of car, pharmaceutical, and luxury perfume ads. This "genre mimicry" was essential to tricking the audience during the first few seconds of each slot. The production was a sprint; the brief arrived just before Christmas 2017, and the final cut was delivered only hours before the broadcast deadline.
Synergy and the Double Horse
The campaign relied on rare internal synergy within Procter & Gamble. Tide coordinated with other P&G brands to feature meta - crossovers, most notably with Old Spice. In one sequence, Harbour sat behind Isaiah Mustafa on a "double horse" to signal the transition from a body wash ad back to Tide. The brand also engaged celebrities like Betty White and Drew Brees to fuel the #TideAd hashtag in real - time, helping the campaign claim 53 other commercials during the game.
3.6 Billion Earned Impressions
The "hijack" resulted in 3.6 billion earned media impressions and a 35% sales growth for Tide Ultra Oxi. Beyond the numbers, the campaign served as a critical pivot for the brand. Launching amidst the dangerous "Tide Pod Challenge" meme, the ads successfully refocused the public conversation on the product's core cleaning benefit without ever acknowledging the controversy. During filming, Harbour reportedly recorded a take saying, "Don't eat Tide Pods," but it was left on the cutting room floor to maintain the campaign's playful, high - concept tone.
Creative Strategy Deconstructed
Company
A market-leading detergent known for superior cleaning power and 'whiter whites.'
Category
Super Bowl advertisers rely on glossy production values where every character wears pristine, spotless clothing.
Customer
Viewers are overwhelmed by a barrage of expensive ads and often tune out the actual brands.
Culture
The Super Bowl is the ultimate 'ad for ads' moment where people actively watch and critique commercial tropes.
Company
A market-leading detergent known for superior cleaning power and 'whiter whites.'
Category
Super Bowl advertisers rely on glossy production values where every character wears pristine, spotless clothing.
Strategy:
Reframe a universal production cliché as a proprietary product benefit to colonize the entire media environment.
Customer
Viewers are overwhelmed by a barrage of expensive ads and often tune out the actual brands.
Culture
The Super Bowl is the ultimate 'ad for ads' moment where people actively watch and critique commercial tropes.
Strategy:
Reframe a universal production cliché as a proprietary product benefit to colonize the entire media environment.
Results
The campaign achieved massive success, including coverage by 680 news outlets and generating 3.6 billion impressions. It led to a 35% sales growth for Tide Ultra Oxi. The campaign was widely praised by media, with CNBC calling it the 'most brilliant ads in the Super Bowl' and The Washington Post labeling them 'the best ads of the night.' It also won numerous awards, including the Super Clio.
3.6B
impressions
35%
sales growth
680
news outlets
Strategy Technique
Create a New Mental Shortcut
It trained viewers to associate the sight of clean clothes - a constant in all advertising - with Tide, turning every subsequent commercial into a brand trigger.
Explore Technique
Creative Technique
Hijack the Medium
By claiming every other commercial featuring clean clothes was secretly a Tide ad, the campaign effectively took over the entire Super Bowl broadcast without paying for every slot.
Explore Technique
Craft Breakdown
This campaign's craft is exceptional due to its brilliant use of copywriting and art direction to subvert the entire Super Bowl advertising landscape, turning every other ad into a potential vehicle for Tide.
The clever, self-aware script perfectly captures and subverts advertising tropes, creating a meta-narrative that is both hilarious and highly effective.
The meticulous recreation of various advertising styles is flawless, making the 'reveal' in each vignette both surprising and satisfying.
David Harbour's deadpan delivery and versatile performance are crucial to the campaign's humor and its ability to seamlessly inhabit different ad genres.
The strategic placement of ads throughout the Super Bowl broadcast, including the live integration, was essential to the campaign's 'hijacking' effect.
The synergy between the witty copywriting and the precise art direction is what makes the campaign so impactful, as the visual parodies provide the perfect canvas for the clever script.
