Cannes Lions

Clearing Plots

SOKO, Sao Paulo / CIF / 2024

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OVERVIEW

Background

CIF, a range of home care cleaning products, has been championing the core message "CIF Saves You" in Brazil for the past three years, emphasizing its miraculous effectiveness against any kind of dirt, thereby safeguarding household items while also saving time. Targeting Millennials, who, according to Kantar, rank TV and cinema as their top passion point, while 84% of them express a general dislike for advertising, often avoiding or skipping ads, especially in traditional formats. This situation underscored the need for a campaign with genuine stopping power on TV and digital platforms to achieve our ambitious business objectives. In response to this challenge, CIF set clear objectives to increase brand power and sales volume, demonstrating its time-saving and home appliance cleaning capabilities, and captivate the Millennial audience.

Idea

To underscore CIF's time-saving cleaning prowess, we recreated iconic scenes from "Psycho," "Halloween," and "Scream." Contrary to the original narratives, our renditions conclude with characters emerging unharmed, thanks to CIF's exceptional cleaning strength. This concept aimed to illustrate CIF's potential to alter cinematic stories by unveiling hidden threats via the luster of its cleaning efficacy. Our campaign went beyond accelerating plot resolutions; it intricately wove CIF's product advantage into the cultural tapestry of popular media.

Through active participation in cultural dialogues via cinemas, social media, and Letterboxd, we deeply embedded our campaign within the entertainment landscape, achieving remarkable success with widespread acclaim and enthusiastic endorsements from the audience. This underscored CIF's ability not only to conserve time but whimsically 'save lives' in horror film scenarios, creatively merging CIF's utility with entertainment narratives, significantly magnifying the brand's message, cementing its relevance, and enhancing its appeal to a culturally attuned audience.

Strategy

Our strategy took a bold dive into entertainment, specifically exploiting a common trope in horror cinema where characters often realize the killer's presence too late, inevitably leading to their demise. Recognizing Millennials' top genres are comedy, action, and horror, we crafted a humorous narrative: What if these horror movie characters had used CIF? This concept was built on the understanding that Millennials have increasingly shorter attention spans and are frequently frustrated by the prolonged time it takes for horror film characters to acknowledge the looming threat. By employing CIF's cleaning capabilities to quickly uncover hidden dangers, we accelerated the plot's pace. This strategy aimed not only to alleviate the annoyance of delayed plots, but also to give CIF the main role. By applying this insight to well-known horror films, we wanted to transform potential interruptions into compelling entertainment.

Execution

We innovatively executed "the shortest horror plots ever," condensing iconic scenes from "Psycho," "Scream," and "Halloween" into 15-second films. These narratives mirrored the originals' progression from calm to tension, diverging at the climax where, thanks to CIF's cleaning brilliance, characters spot the looming threat in the reflection of a polished surface, ensuring their safety. Authentic recreation of the horror classics involved meticulous attention to costume, lighting, set design, and props, providing audiences an immersive experience. Leveraging Letterbox as our primary social platform activated a community already passionate about films, enhancing engagement. Our strategic use of YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram ensured widespread reach and engagement, showcasing CIF's effectiveness to diverse audiences. This blend of creativity and precision not only demonstrated CIF's benefits but also pushed the boundaries of traditional advertising, making it impactful and memorable.

Outcome

The campaign achieved unprecedented results, substantially elevating CIF's brand engagement and sales. We managed to achieve a record on QR code scans for our e-commerce. Through our innovative 15-second horror film parodies, we reached +800 million organic impacts, creating a viral sensation across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and TV. Engagement soared as audiences shared, commented on, and interacted with the content, appreciating CIF's clever integration of beloved horror narratives.

Critically, the campaign catalyzed a shift in consumer behavior towards CIF, with many expressing newfound appreciation for the brand's innovative marketing approach, with 98% positive sentiment in our social channels. Besides, we doubled our sales volume compared to the same period in 2023, increasing 105%. By intertwining entertainment with advertising, we not only captivated our target audience, but also set a new benchmark for effective brand communication, demonstrating the powerful impact of blending product utility with cultural relevance.

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