Laundry and cleaning brand smol is launching its most ambitious campaign to date, titled “Sick of Plastic”, developed by agencies Mother and Drool.
The eight week campaign across TV, out of home posters and digital channels features a washing machine ‘vomiting’ plastic packaging, and calls on households who are sick of plastic to switch to the UK’s first brand to offer laundry capsules in plastic-free packaging.
70 million plastic laundry containers from UK households each year are not recycled, and end up in landfill or incinerated.
Hillary Strong, CMO of smol said: “People are well aware of the need to reduce their plastic waste, but few dwell on laundry - one of those things that we all have to buy and use, and a huge generator of single-use plastic waste. At smol, we’re proud of pioneering the UK’s first plastic-free laundry capsule packaging - and know that if everyone in the UK switched to smol, we’d prevent 70 million plastic laundry packs going to landfill every year.
“This campaign aims to introduce smol to an audience fatigued by anti-plastic messaging, with a humorous, attention-grabbing concept: A washing machine that vomits the plastic waste it’s likely to get through in its lifetime. Mirroring our audience who are quite literally sick of plastic.”
Oli Rimoldi, Creative at Mother added: “Deploying a playful metaphor to dramatise the shocking amount of laundry plastic waste the UK goes through attempts to sidestep the inertia in this market. We’re hoping the ‘plastic vomiting washing machine’ will make people smile whilst drawing their attention to the plastic problem - offering them an easy, simple solution to make change with smol.”
Jen Smith of Craft Media said: “The media plan is designed to drive cut through and notice by leaning into smol's challenger brand personality, with balanced channels and a buying approach that signals quality and drives familiarity.” The campaign will run for eight weeks on TV and BVOD, complemented with OOH media, underpinned by smol's digital performance media.