Introduction

This campaign was developed for the National Student Advertising Competition, an immersive opportunity for students to experience working through the full campaign process of a live brief.

In the eight month development phase, our team met twice a week with involvement ramping up throughout. During this time, I conducted in-depth secondary research and one-on-one interviews, contributed to strategic discussions, and played a role in crafting multiple campaign deliverables. But more than anything, I learned.

Through developing the Cold Confidence campaign, I not only grew as a strategic communicator and collaborator—I found my love for advertising and decided to pursue it as a career.

Let's set the scene.

Tide has been an American household staple since its inception in 1946, and throughout those decades has worked to better peoples' lives.

As societal priorities change, Tide keeps up, and with their latest initiatives, they are striving to cut carbon emissions OUT of the laundry process.

Recognizing that the best way that they can improve their environmental impact is by utilizing a formula engineered to clean in cold and turning users to wash on cold.

The ask:

Increase loads washed on cold to 75% by 2030 by building a multi-touch point campaign aimed at the "new America," aka younger generations.

The Challenge...

Laundry exists in our audience's "Cognitive Junk Drawer," a mental space filled with mindless tasks like typing your shoes or washing the dishes. For most people, laundry is a deeply ingrained habit learned during adolescence—94% of our survey respondents believing there was nothing wrong with the way they do laundry now.

*Inspired by Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Tide told us one of the largest hinderances to washing on cold is the lack of knowledge. However, even after learning about the benefits of cold washing, our audience still resists the switch. We found that this was the result of cognitive dissonance. When confronted with the facts, they deflect with warm-washing justifications.

"I wash on warm because I feel like if I washed on cold, I'm not getting all the germs out."

– Allison, 19

"I like to shower warm, so I assume my clothes are the same."

– Katelyn, 22

We call this barrier the "Fauxnomenon." It's the disproportionate anxiety that our audience feels when changing a non-consequential daily life habit like the route people take to work, their go-to order at a restaurant, or the way they do their laundry.

The Opportunity…

Our audience is tired of being told what they should do. In today’s social media-driven world, they are bombarded with advice, causing “should fatigue.” Instead of making cold washing feel like another rule to follow, we needed to position it as a personal benefit—something that adds value rather than demands change.