Head & Shoulders (H&S) is the #1 anti-dandruff shampoo globally. But in Indonesia, it was a mere challenger-brand to market leader “Clear”, owned by Unilever, which sells 55% more bottles of shampoo.

This was despite heavy marketing investment using the proven, effective techniques that have elevated H&S to leadership in almost every other market around the world.

When we analysed the sales data, we realised that H&S was doing well in the large retail stores, but not in the small Mom & Pop shops (independent, usually family-owned businesses) that make up 50% of sales in the hair care category.

Our objective was simple and business focused. Our challenge was to replace the 30-year market leader “Clear” of the Anti-Dandruff category.

Delivering on this ambitious goal would require us to generate behaviour change but the only metric that really mattered was our ability to deliver the No. 1 spot.

Say Head & Shoulders Proudly! Say it any way you want to, because regardless of how you pronounce our name, H&S removes 100% dandruff.

We would give permission to Indonesians to misspell/mispronounce our brand name, indeed we encouraged it! “Say-It-Proud” helped overcome lack of confidence, dovetailing with our overall brand purpose of building self-confidence.

In a nation of more than 700 different dialects and tongues this campaign has potential to get to the heart of Indonesian society and culture…

We would create a campaign that would speak to the heart of Indonesians using humour and cultural messaging to tackle people’s fears and let them own their difference.

TV would be used to build mass awareness and then we would boost the conversation on social media, which 90% of Indonesians use.

Importantly, we complemented our efforts with local radio allowing us to customise our campaign to each region’s dialect and language.

We celebrated the H&S pronunciation struggle in a comical way by releasing real bloopers clips of our veteran brand ambassador mispronouncing our brand name during a commercial shoot, generating a million views in three days! User-generated content from consumers, influencers, and even other brands’ versions added millions more!

We collated common misspellings/mispronunciations and tweaked our Search to accept all versions, also producing more than 300 packs carrying these names.

Efforts climaxed at Indonesia’s most culturally relevant event: Independence-Day, celebrating our 700 dialects with TV messages featuring consumers offering their own versions of the H&S brand name as well as bloopers from our spokesperson proving even he couldn’t pronounce Head&Shoulders correctly.

Locally customised regional radio spots expanded the message’s reach across Indonesia’s many islands.

For the first time in history, Indonesia was officially authorised by Global P&G HQ as the only country where a brand name can be misspelled/mispronounced!

• For the first time, H&S topped the 10% share growing sales by a whopping +20%.

• H&S took over anti-dandruff category leadership in Modern Trade and became the fastest-growing brand in Mom&Pop shops,growing 60 Basis points (Nielsen).

• H&S grew users +9%, adding 1,900,000 Households.The only shampoo brand growing user-base.

• Our bloopers video went viral(18M views in three-months).

• H&S received overwhelming coverage from 50 online articles and event featured in CNN news and GTV, the country’s biggest TV/media network.

• Campaign reached 114 million people with 675 million impressions across touchpoints!

• Consumer interest continues as search volumes grew +36% vs. previous quarter with more than half coming from misspelled/mispronounced names.

• Distribution of H&S in all types of stores has grown faster than ever thanks to awareness increase.With so many people now asking for H&S, more and more store owners are demanding to stock the brand.