looking for direction

At the time of coming on to the project, the brand team was working with the idea that Comfort adds a little dose of positivity to your life, and they were looking for ways to support mental health. 

There was a concern that this was an over-reach for both brand and product and wouldn't help them meet the primary business goal of increasing their relevance with a younger audience.

Additionally, there was a need to develop a brand purpose for Comfort that would help align the brand with Unilever's overall Corporate Sustainability Plan.

a sprint based approach

To bring in fresh thinking and momentum to the project, I was tasked to tackle the brief together with a fellow Ogilvy brand strategist Keren, a Global Strategy Partner across household Unilever brands such as Dove. 

We set out to tackle the brief in a series of four sprints: opportunity sprint, idea sprint, definition sprint and pilot sprint.

Our aim wasn’t just to land on words on paper to define the proposition and purpose, but to also explore how we could bring it to life through experience at the same time.

To achieve this, we formed a multidisciplinary team made up of strategy, creative, creative technology and user experience – and of course our client.

We led the team through multiple sprint workshops to unearth insights, explore creative potential and ensure alignment with Unilever’s Sustainable Living Purpose strategy.

the a.r.t. of finding a cause TO FIGHT

We defined the parameters of what we were aiming for using Unilever's A.R.T. brand strategy framework (Authenticity, Relevancy and Talkability). With the framework a constant reminder on our sprint room wall, we set out to land on a territory that would be meaningful not just for the audience in general but also Comfort as a brand.

Starting our exploration from the space of mental health and anxiety amongst Millennials (yes, a very broad audience definition at that), we aimed to bring things closer to Comfort's own turf – clothing.

This naturally led us to exploring anxieties and sustainability issues that were more relevant to clothing in particular. Our research soon started surfacing some rather alarming facts: 

- 60 billion square meters of textiles go to waste every year in the industrial process of producing clothing
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- 1 million tonnes of clothing gets ditched by UK consumers every year

- £140m worth of clothing goes to landfill each year in the UK alone

These disturbing statistics aside, when my planning partner Keren shared that fast fashion was the second most polluting industry after oil and gas we realised this was a battle really worth taking on. The insight became a rallying point that galvanised our team.

The more we read into the space, the more we realised how here was a truly sustainable area that Comfort could naturally own. It also fit right into Unilever’s Sustainable Living Purpose agenda.

FRAMING THE HUMAN DILEMMA COMFORT COULD SOLVE

Whilst concern for the planet and good causes featured high up on the Millennial agenda, we needed to find a human insight that brought things closer to home.

We realised there was an inherent human contradiction: due to social media, many felt the need to always be seen sporting a fresh new look. This, of course, fuelled the consumption of fast fashion. A vicious cycle.

Comfort as a brand, however, could champion a different, more sustainable way forward that was better for the planet and also people’s wallets. The product truth, after all, is that Comfort makes your clothes last longer (conditioned fibers protect from wear and tear so colours look brighter and fabrics feel softer).

This led to a simple proposition that connected with the real lives of our audience and the hot topic of clothes waste: if you love clothing – and the planet – care for it. Comfort was here to help you do something about it by adding life to clothes already in your wardrobe.

It was time to elevate this product truth and insight we had landed by bringing to the brand level.

from a purpose to a platform with legs to grow

The next job was to explore how we could give the purpose we had landed on arms and legs to grow on. We brought our thinking to life through different experiential and digital activations ideas.

Whilst the cause was serious, we wanted to take it down a route that was both educational yet entertaining and engaging at the same time.

We tested various routes and concepts in the Ogilvy Customer Lab that I was leading at the time. We also briefed the WPP agency Hogarth to carry out a rapid qualitative study at three key markets: Indonesia, Brazil and the UK.

We reported back to our client with further findings and recommendations.

The creative idea: long live clothes

With a clear direction of travel set through our strategy sprint with early concepts, comms and experience ideas – the creative process could next properly begin. 'Long Live Clothes' was the idea that was born in the aftermath of our sprint project.

The creative idea inspired a range of executions, including TVCs in different markets. The idea lives on across multiple touch points from web to product packaging – look it up the next time you walk down the laundry aisle of any supermarket near you.

All in all, we had done the brief justice. Repositioning Comfort from a laundry brand to a clothes-care brand helped to:

• create relevance with a younger audience

• find a voice in a greater number of channels: vintage clothing pop-up shop, editorial in fashion magazines, fashion influencers, TV show in Brazil featuring influencers scouring vintage shops for clothing treasure and advising how to care for them

• open up the innovation pipeline: denim car intimates care, dark-clothing care

• - promote an authentic brand purpose that the product itself could help deliver on.