Kleenex Let it out

Let it Out Category: Household Products and Supplies Brand: Kleenex Client: Kimberly-Clark Primary Agency: JWT Media Agency: MindShare Contributing Agencies: GMR, Ketchum

Strategic Challenge
Pass the Kleenex, my brand's in trouble The year was 2006, and life should have been good for Kleenex.

Launched as a make-up remover in 1924, it had enjoyed 80 years of continuous success to become not only the world's favorite facial tissue but an indispensable part of everyday life. Kleenex tissue boxes can be found in over half of American homes.

The brand has few competitors and private label has not made great inroads.

The brand had traditionally sold itself on the promise that when the laws of nature mean you're not quite in control, Kleenex is there to make life better.

Insight
People feel vulnerable when their bodies emit yucky stuffsnot, spit, sweat and tears.

Kleenex's role eliminating this vulnerability, restoring order. Re-establishing control, giving people their composure and confidence back.

Market Share of Kleenex had begun to decline in the early 2000s. Why?

The very ubiquity that had made Kleenex so successful was part of the problem.

Its omnipresence made it a brand that was taken for granted, just part of the furniture.

Product quality had been allowed to deteriorate over the years. As a result, affection for the brand had cooled.

Problem Though well known and respected, people not longer loved Kleenex -even though it was right with them during the most emotional moments of their lives.

JWT knew it had to do something dramatic to reverse this dangerous erosion. Unfortunately, it did not have any new or improved product to get them to reconsider the brand. Emotion alone would have to turn around Kleenex's fortunes.

Objectives

To create strong engagement with KLEENEX audience, leading to increased involvement and reappraisal of the brand.

Creative strategy

JWT also added one new statement, with the expectation of significant differences between people aware and unaware of the campaign:

"Is the brand that most encourages you to let your emotions out. "

The Big Idea To make Kleenex stand not for control, but for release of human emotions.

The quest to help the Kleenex brand back on to its pedestal began with examining the brand's promise: "When the laws of nature mean you're not quite in control, Kleenex is there to make life better.

The answer did not come out of a focus group or a segmentation study. The insight emerged from a radio program about a team of Army doctors and nurses in an ER in Baghdad, who were treating wounded US soldiers.

A nurse talked about the pervasive sense of numbness, the absence of tears in the operating rooms despite the harrowing experiences everyone was going through.

But then she said "somebody brought in a box of Kleenex and the next moment the tears came, all the stuff we had been bottling up came out. There was a lot of crying but by the end of it we felt better. "

Clearly, the role of the brand at moments like these is not to help people regain their selfcontrol, but the opposite.

It helped them let go of everything they had so desperately and painfully bottled up Here, the vulnerability was a good thing, not the enemy.

And the release, not the control, of emotion was the reason people felt better.

This is when JWT realized that Kleenex needed to become the exact opposite of its past Kleenex should not stand for control but a release of human emotions.

Bringing the Idea to Life

We had found the Kleenex cause the one that people would love the brand for. Kleenex could become a permissive brand, encouraging and inspiring people to act differently, to cry, shout, scream and laugh when they wanted to.

It could stand up for the free expression of emotion. And be associated with that good feeling, encourage tissue usage, but also change the world for the better.

This brief would usher Kleenex into the century, with a new benefit and a new communications model.

Release is almost always a social act, a mutual and shared letting down of people's guard. That's why it was imperative to create a genuine dialog with consumers.

That's why JWT asked the creative and media teams to make everything as participatory as possible.

The rallying cry JWT created was simple but visceral: Let it Out. It felt good.

JWT went to the streets, set up a sofa, a sympathetic good listener and a box of Kleenex and filmed what happened.

As JWT had hoped for, all you need for people to let it out is a good listener and a box of Kleenex. They shared countless number of stories in all different kinds of ways: crying, laughing, ranting, and cheering. All these stories became the basis of JWT communications.

The idea was designed to inspire and create conversation in many ways, across many media beyond just TV: Radio (in channels and programs that focus on self-expression such as Oprah 's radio channel).

 Interactive print, where a flap revealed the subject letting it out, as well as the Let It Out manifesto.

 In theaters, where people were ready for an emotional experience.

 Live events where people could let it out to the "good listener: with street teams inviting people to be more expressive, telling them about the health benefits of not bottling up their emotions.

 Banner ads that invited viewers to let it out on timely events and seasonally occurring events.

 PR that focused on a study on America's attitudes and behaviors with regard to expressing their emotions.

 A Web site that invited people to let it out by sharing their stories, images, videos and also contained the Let It Out blog and a number of Webisodes more Let it Out stories from a broad spectrum of people, covering many different emotions.

Total coverage of the Let it Out campaign was 13.3 million impressions (Source: Ketchum PRJ.) It got written about in dozens of blogs and discussed several hundreds times on message boards and other online communities (Source: Nielsen BuzzMetrics). Mentions included Pop Candy on USAToday.com, Redbook blog on iViliage and TheViewFromHer.com

Over 120,000 people went out of their way to watch the ads on YouTube (Source: YouTube), and another 250,000 watched ads and Webisodes on YAHOO! Video.

increase is worth over $50M. More