Clorox Bleach is iconic. It’s long been trusted by consumers to tackle hardcore messes in high-stakes situations. But its perception as the nuclear option of household cleaners was alienating Millennials. They were afraid of it, and they were unsure of how or when to use it. We needed to shift the perception from fear to confidence.
We had two goals: uncover interesting new ways for Millennials to use bleach in day-to-day life and flip a fear of our product into a curiosity around its possibilities.
Through research we learned that we could dramatically change how people view the product by simply communicating how to use bleach. An instructional video is an obvious answer; Clorox makes them all the time. But, a typical Clorox demo video wouldn’t be enough to break through. So we tried something different.
We turned to one of the most effective ways to hijack human emotion: music. We made a music video that could inform, entertain and surprise a notoriously skeptical audience.
To override Millennial’s b*llsh*t meters, we appealed to their irreverent and ironic senses of humor. We disguised instructional information as karaoke-worthy lyrics, teaching a new generation how to use our product - and we got them tapping their toes! Yes, a music video about bleach.
Even with limited media support, the video took off and quickly grew to 8.3 million views.
But the high view numbers don’t tell the whole story. As an instructional video with tons of information, we broke conventional wisdom and made a 60 second piece. That’s an eternity in internet time.
On YouTube the average view duration is 7 seconds. Most advertisers are lucky to get someone more than two seconds past the skip ad button.
Our average view duration was 54 seconds! Almost everyone who saw this video decided to watch to the end.
They didn’t just watch, they learned. 1 in 2 people said they learned a new use for Clorox Bleach.
They didn't just learn, they considered buying. The percentage of respondents considering using Clorox after watching the whole video increased from 39% to 87%.
This video exceeded all of Clorox’s expectations and quickly became their most watched, loved and successful instructional video ever.
