Many have heard of S.O.S pads, or have at least seen them. Perhaps your grandma used them to scrub the bathroom floor or the kitchen. Or, maybe your mom used them to wash dishes when you were a kid. Whatever the case, Clorox's nearly 100-year-old S.O.S soap pad was a brand of cleaning's past, and it wanted to introduce its classic product to a younger generation, specifically through social media. We identified Facebook as the most appropriate platform to prioritize social efforts. S.O.S was able to successfully launch its Facebook page, surpassing its major competitor in fans in just six weeks. However, following this success, the brand began to see a plateau in performance.
S.O.S' Facebook posts were performing moderately well, but there was an opportunity to ramp up content on the platform to help it reach even more of its audience. With a goal of increasing engagement (through likes, comments, and shares) within its existing and potential target audience, the brand challenged Rise Interactive to develop a solution to enhance its social presence to reach it.
Before developing a strategy, we conducted thorough research, analyzing the social efforts of several similar, familiar brands with strong presences on social platforms—from Facebook to Vine. Our team found that highly visual content and short, stop-motion videos performed especially well for others, garnering significant engagement. We then pinpointed popular web trends and content users were sharing that could be appropriate for S.O.S. We found an opportunity in the world of memes and short videos, popular territory in which S.O.S had not yet explored.
Next, we evaluated S.O.S' existing social efforts. The majority of its content included standard images with engaging copy, but there was an opportunity to make the content more robust and modern by adding video and putting a twist on traditional content. We had also selectively paid to promote previous posts, but had a chance to see even greater success by increasing S.O.S' investment in this new campaign. The result was the creation and promotion of a three-part campaign, composed of more shareable content in the form of memes, cartoons, and six-second stop motion videos. The memes focused on the benefits of S.O.S pads, combining powerful imagery with entertaining copy. In our previous analysis, we found that fans were engaging significantly more with S.O.S' vintage "Throwback Thursday" ads than with other content, so we revamped a vintage S.O.S branded cartoon. The videos added character through playful narratives in which S.O.S pads were having fun poolside and in other unconventional areas.
By harnessing popular web trends and tapping into S.O.S' brand heritage, S.O.S took its social to another level, creating content that brought humor and personality to its classic product. Compared to previous posts, the new campaign cartoons and memes generated an average of 23 times more shares and an average of 52 times more likes per post (1398 compared to 27). Additionally, the videos garnered, on average, three times more shares than previous photo-based content and more than twice the number of likes (61 compared to 27).
