Warm Blanket Award #10: Secret Deodorant
Selling deodorant has gotta suck. After all, how many different ways can you say "stops wetness" and "prevents odor"?
This is where really smart marketers leave features and benefits behind and take up a bigger torch.
Secret has a slam dunk with their new Mean Stinks campaign. They're pairing up with the Girls Leadership Institute, best-selling author and girl-expert Rachel Simmons, teen girls and moms, too, to put an end to the mean streak in girls.
I love this campaign for so many, many reasons. Here are but a few:
- It's relevant but not obvious. Secret's tagline: "Fearlessness. Apply daily." elevates deodorant from a beauty product to a philosophy. It's the perfect bridge to the Mean Stinks campaign since bullying is all about fearfulness -- the very thing Secret stands against.
- It's not heavy-handed. The fabulous print ads show graffiti on a bathroom stall that reads "Kara B is a lovely person!!!!" The call-to-action instructs "Be nice behind someone's back," followed by the URL to the Facebook page (more on that below). Even the logo is rendered in context, a simple doodle at the bottom of the bathroom door.
- It's multi-sided. The online community at Facebook lets teen girls anonymously upload video apologies, submit "sticky situations" where they need help, post kind graffiti on their friends' walls, and even download an app that scores them on the kindness quotient of their Facebook updates.
As of this post, the Secret Facebook page has over 800,000 likes. Including my own. For creating a campaign that involves moms, helps teens, and dares to tackle one of the thorniest girl issues out there, I award Secret a Warm Blanket award. Please leave your thoughts and opinions in the comments section below, even if -- no, especially if -- you don't agree with what I've written.
posted by Kat Gordon @ 1:28 PM
4 Comments
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4 Comments:
Love this. Just love it. Thanks Kat – I'm gonna pass this on to my soon-to-be 13-year-old.
Lauren
Mean does stink, but how important is anti perspirant to our health? What about the corporations' interests? There may be many caring people involved but the outcome is to give girls anti perspirant and deodorant and sell it as an element for social change. These substances aren't that healthy. People develop sensitivites and high toxicity internally from such devoted use to such products. Also, when one's body feels slowed or sick from toxins that don't get released naturally(sweating) then there is a higher tendency to be cranky..yes?
Thanks for pointing it out, and hopefully this campaign could be diverted out of this particular corporate interest to one that is really about health and attitudes of our young women and girls!
What a great idea! I buy Secret and now will for the rest of my life. A public service campaign with a little advertising. Finally someone is really doing something about this!
As always, love the comments from readers. Anonymous makes an interesting case about message and messenger being in sync. A similar issue was brought up with another Warm Blanket award for Stouffers (that their food isn't healthy for families). I call 'em as I see 'em and focus more on the message and execution than the social implications (unless they're glaring). While the healthiness of deodorant can be debated -- and should be -- we're a long way off from the day when girls are at peace with sweaty underarms. Sad, but true.
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