New York:
Consumers making major life transitions are often in the market for big-ticket items, which is why there are so many cap-tossing graduates, newlyweds and newborns in commercials from real estate companies, automakers and banks. But now milestones are at the centre of an advertising campaign for a decidedly smaller purchase: household products.
Method, the brand of eco-friendly and stylishly designed hand soaps, dish soaps and laundry detergents, is introducing a series of quirky commercials that depict a young couple meeting at a party, falling in love, moving in together and having a baby.
Alison Worthington, the chief marketing officer of Method, said many consumers report first encountering the brand in situations like washing their hands in a new romantic interest's bathroom or deciding to try a nontoxic surface cleaner after having a child or getting a dog.
"We find that people who love Method discover us at a point of inflection," Worthington said.
Four 30-second commercials chronicle the relationship arc of two characters, Francine and Charles, played by Celia Diane and Benjamin Weaver. The spots were previewed in a video in the style of a movie trailer that was posted on Method's Facebook page March 7. In the first commercial, Francine appears at a gathering hosted by Charles and is the life of the party, dancing on a table, balancing a spoon on her nose and tossing a bottle of wine to another guest.
"She was wild, outrageous, what a mess," says a male voice-over with a French accent, which is atypical for cleaning products commercials but lends the spot, along with the colorful and chic furnishings, a certain whimsical charm.
"Charles, on the other hand, was clean, practical, pretty neat for a guy," the voice-over continues, as the actor is shown during the party using Method products to wash dishes, wipe down a counter and start a load of laundry.
Having never spoken during the party, the next morning Charles discovers Francine in his immaculate bathroom, where she had apparently passed out. Charles stands in the doorway in his pajamas, holding a bottle of French lavender spray cleaner, and Francine, looking up, says, "Everything smells so pretty."
"What should he say?" asks the voice-over.
"Do you like bacon?" asks Charles.
"Nice," says the voice-over, as the spot closes with the couple having breakfast in his kitchen and the brand's tagline, "Clean happy."
Other commercials chart milestones for the couple with Method woven in, like a dinner where they drop a roasted chicken, quickly clean the floor and reassemble the chicken on a serving platter moments before their parents arrive. Another features a barbecue where a pregnant Francine eats fistfuls of coleslaw with her hands and cleans them with hand soap.
The final spot introduces their toddler, Bernard, who, sitting in a high chair and covered with spaghetti sauce, fires a gloppy meatball across the kitchen and strikes the back of his father. Nodding his approval at the throw, Charles tosses his shirt and Bernard's outfit into the laundry machine.
The campaign is by Mekanism, the agency of record for Method. Both are based in San Francisco. Television commercials will be introduced next Wednesday in five popular markets for the brand - Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Denver and Boston. People in New York and Philadelphia will not see television commercials, but both cities will be geo-targeted with online ads. Spending for the campaign is estimated at $6.2 million.
David Vinjamuri, the author of "Accidental Branding" and an adjunct professor of marketing at New York University, has followed Method since it was founded in 2000. What is unique about the eco-friendly brand, he said, is that it avoids typical packaging elements like verdant trees and illustrations of the Earth, opting instead for hand soap in an eye-catching tear-shaped bottle and laundry detergent in a pump bottle.
"They combined two completely different segments in the home that I don't think had ever been done before, with a very highly developed design aesthetic that is not what you associate with natural or environmental products," Vinjamuri said.
Mekanism introduced the "Clean happy" tagline in 2012 with a series of offbeat music videos that featured a bearded guitar player in a white suit and a marching band on a stage where they extolled Method products. While the videos collectively have more than 4 million views on YouTube, Tommy Means, the executive director of Mekanism, said the challenge for the new campaign was to be memorable while showing the products being used in a home.
"For the second round, they wanted to tell the story in a much more relevant way," Means said.
As for the French-accented voice-over, Means noted its novelty and said that an attention-grabbing quirk is important for a relatively small company squaring off against iconic brands.
"Tide has hundreds of millions to spend that we have to contend with, so my job is to say if it's a French accent that makes an audience sit up and take notice, then let's do it," Means said.
"We often ask, 'What would Tide not do?'" Means continued. "And then we do it."
© 2014, The New York Times News Service