When a once provocative idea starts to see a decline in sales due to a lack in relevance, bold action is needed.

This is the story of how Persil, responding to the fundamental impact that technological and societal changes were having on childhood experience, re-positioned dirt from good to critical. It is the story of how the brand became radicalised, transforming its role from supportive advocate of relaxed childhood to purpose-driven activist and agitator for change.

Our idea was to compare kids directly to prisoners to highlight the shocking fact that today children spend less time outdoors than prison inmates. This would be the match that would set the campaign alight, captivating the attention of the media and provoking conversation amongst parents.

We enlisted the world's leading expert on child development, Sir Ken Robinson, help educate and provide guidance on the issue. And we facilitated real change by partnering with NGOs and schools.

In reigniting our purpose we got the public to sit up and take notice:

• Over 70 articles amongst some of the most prestigious news publications out there

• 22.6m Twitter impressions (Twitter ProMo 2016)

• 450k views of the mini-documentary on YouTube (YouTube 2016)

We turned that attention into action:

• 82% of mums who had seen the campaign planned to get their kids outdoors more the following week (Google Consumer Survey 2016)

• 122k downloads of the Persil ‘Wild Explorers’ app (The Wild Network 2016)

• We got kids outside for 750,000+ more hours (Project Dirt 2016)

And our brand and bottom line reaped the benefits:

• Brand conviction and relevance increased 8% (Millward Brown 2016)

• 12million more washes (Neilson, 3 months to Sept 2016 vs. previous 3 months)

• +2.1% value sales (Ibid)

• +13 bps value share (Ibid)