Listerine Clean Start is an on-going mobile campaign featuring timely posts and mouth illustrations that remind people to rinse the hateful words they’ve said during specific trending topics.

Mouth illustrations were created based on social trends and topical situations that generated hate and violent reactions on social media.

Each illustration was crafted to reflect specific situations, with unique characters and mouth designs. Each character talked about a personal moment of hate to created affinity with the reader. Plus, the copy was rendered in a handwritten style to further reflect the personal approach.

Each illustration started with the hate that needed to be rinsed, and ended with a call to refresh our ways and start clean.

Illustrations were created and posted on both Facebook and Instagram as “hateful” situations arose. All the posts and illustrations were aggregated on Instagram.

Some posts and situations were more relevant than others, thereby generating more organic and authentic reactions and shares.

For instance, the illustration titled “Daughter,” one of the posts for International Women’s Day, was viewed more than 120,000 times, and shared over 4,000 times, while generating organic conversations – all without any media boost or financial support from the Marketing team.

While the campaign may have helped raise further awareness and sales for the brand – and probably helped in making Listerine be seen as less clinical and functional – the ultimate goal of the campaign is to, in its own little way, help lessen the hate coming from people’s mouths; and encourage everyone to have a clean start.

Our audience are those who go online to social media using their mobile phones, whether for a few minutes or a few hours. Our audience are those who post strong opinions, and have even stronger reactions to the posts of others. They are those who, knowingly or unknowingly, generate hate online.

Thus, the campaign lived on Facebook and Instagram – platforms where the audience posted their hateful sentiments.

Plus, since the topics that people hated and reacted to changed frequently, the mouth illustrations also had to constantly evolve and be timely.

During the 2016 Philippine Elections, hateful expressions became the trending topic.

With so much dirt and hate coming from people’s mouths, Listerine saw an opportunity to remind people to rinse away the negativity and bad stuff.

It was time for a Clean Start with Listerine.

And after the elections, the campaign continued to create more timely illustrations featuring trending events and conversations – such as International Women’s Day, the immigration ban, Christmas, and even Earth Hour – and talked about the hate and frustrations that people have said during those times.

Its goal is to help lessen the hate in social media, and give everyone a Clean Start with Listerine.