Laundry is a pretty private chore. People don’t often talk about how they do laundry - especially what temperature setting they do it on. Through our celebrity choices, including our partnership with the NFL, we were able to tap into different pockets of fandom and leverage their influence to educate and motivate consumers. Our #TurnToCold campaign not only drove real behavior change, but motivated people enough to become advocates of the Tide and #TurnToCold, which helped us reach even more people with over 1.4B organic social impressions.

Tide, as the leader in the category, is always looking for ways to ensure the laundry process is the best it can be from product superiority to even the environment. When Tide discovered that 90% of the energy in the laundry process can be eliminated if people didn’t use hot water, we knew we needed to do something about it. Only problem was our audience had no idea. So we set out on a mission to let America know they should turn to cold.

Our challenge was not only to make people aware, but actually drive the behavior change, which is no easy feat. With that, our main objectives were to get people to turn to cold and ultimately buy Tide for the best results in cold.

Tide set out on a mission to convince everyone to make the switch to cold water under one big umbrella #TurnToCold. We brought together “cold” pop culture icons “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, one of America’s best known professional wrestlers, and Ice-T, an actor best known for Law & Order: SVU to convince celebrities like Vanilla Ice, Mr. T, Annie Murphy and Gordon Ramsay to turn to cold. Then to prove Tide’s superior performance in cold water, we called the NFL and convinced 15 teams— and all of their fans—to wash in cold. We hit multiple pop culture verticals, from music to entertainment to sports to get everyone to #TurnToCold.

Everyone does laundry, and as America’s #1 laundry detergent, we have the right to speak to all of them. We wanted our work to connect with the more than 50% of Americans who weren’t washing their clothes on cold.

We recognized that our diverse target audience would be motivated to turn to cold by different messages, so we used these different reasons to believe to convince them, including that it’s better for the environment, they could save money on their energy bill, and that Tide cleans better in cold than the bargain brand in hot.

By tapping into different RTBs, celebrities, and athletes they trust and respect, but under the same #TurnToCold umbrella, we knew we could convince skeptics.

Starting in March 2021, Tide brought together "cold" pop culture icons, wrestler “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and actor Ice-T, to make "cold calls" to convince celebrities like Vanilla Ice, Mr. T, Annie Murphy and Gordon Ramsay to #TurnToCold and ultimately educated everyone on the benefits of washing in cold in a sticky and memorable way. Then to prove Tide’s superior performance in cold water, we partnered with the NFL in September and convinced 15 teams— and all of their fans—to wash in cold. The #TurnToCold content expanded across broadcast, OTT, and online. The talent posted on social media, extending the reach of #TurntoCold and getting consumers to participate via sweepstakes by pledging to turn to cold. We also had radio, additional social from Tide, and Tide even turned its logo blue across owned platforms to get people’s attention and realize we were serious about our message.

During the first 10 months of the campaign we saw incredible results:

Over 1.3 billion new loads done in cold. That results in over 1 billion kilograms of CO2 saved. That’s like taking almost 400,000 cars off the road for an entire year.

Consumers became advocates of Tide and #TurnToCold which helps us reach even more people with over 1.4 billion organic social impressions and over 2 billion earned media impressions.

Tide moved off the shelf with a +39% sales lift of Tide Hygienic Clean, the product featured in the work. This made Tide Hygienic Clean alone bigger than three of our competitors’ entire brands.