In the past, GROHE mainly focused on benefit-orientated, barely emotional communication with the end consumer. The task was to address a new target group in an emotional, innovative way.

The campaign had to focus on “showering” as one of the most frequent and emotional bathroom experiences, positioning GROHE as the most credible and desirable brand in this branch. The ultimate expression of “lust for life” is singing under the shower. A unique shower karaoke platform www.duschstar.de was created. Here, users could record their own shower songs online, comment and vote for all the submitted material, bringing the first “shower karaoke” community to life. In search for the ‘Duschstar 2008’ (Shower Idol), Germany’s famous music producer Dieter Bohlen chose from among the users a ‘Duschstar of the Month’ and the final winner at the end of the year. We used continuous communication around the platform with press releases, marketing and content cooperations, ads and banner advertising as well as PoS material created traffic.Duschstar.de gave the GROHE brand a fresh spin that is human, humorous, likeable and credible. It resulted in more than 340,000 PI’s, about 2,000 submitted recordings, 300 articles and reports. In total the campaign reached more than 300 million contacts.

In April 2008, GROHE launched the platform www.duschstar.de. With easy to use “Web 2.0” techniques, users uploaded audio/video files with their songs sung under a “virtual” shower. All material could be voted for and commented, bringing the first “shower karaoke” community to life. Dieter Bohlen, a famous German music producer, functioned as testimonial, which increased motivation of the Web 2.0 community. Bohlen chose a “Duschstar of the month” and in November, the final “Duschstar”. On the platform, information on the new GROHE shower sets was placed next to links that led to service-orientated offers (water calculator, dealership search buttons).

For the 2008 European Football Championship, GROHE produced its own Fan Song. Thus the championship served as additional occasion for marketing activities. The chance of winning tickets for a friendly match with the German National Team generated further traffic on the website. Media partners as the TV channel DSF and sport1.de showed the GROHE Fan Song spot.

“Duschstar 2008” stands for the pure joy of showering, giving the brand a fresh spin that is human, humorous, likeable and credible. Singing under the shower became a topic within the Web 2.0 community. The “shower karaoke” platform had more than 74,000 visits, over 340,000 page impressions and up to 2,000 uploads. Showering was furthermore positioned as a media topic: The campaign resulted in more than 300 articles and reports. In total the campaign reached more than 300 million contacts. Moreover, the campaign was successfully linked to products: Many articles featured “singing under the shower as an expression of pure joy” relating directly to GROHE products.