Procter & Gamble’s Downy plans first Super Bowl commercial with mystery celebrity
In a two-month tease, a mystery celebrity will test whether a hoodie can hold its Downy Unstopables scent until game day.
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Procter & Gamble Co.’s Downy will run its first Super Bowl ad in February for its Unstopables laundry scent booster, at least if its scent lasts long enough to convince its mystery celebrity spokesman to go forward with the commercial.
In what may be a record early start for Super Bowl teasers, the laundry scent bead brand revealed its first ad in a two-month campaign from Saatchi & Saatchi today, leading up to the big game on Feb. 12, 2023, on Fox. The ad features the unnamed celebrity spokesman, who appears to be masking his voice with a southern accent as he wears the test hoodie over his head.
The mystery aims to build suspense for the eventual spot—though P&G and Saatchi claim it could always not happen if the celebrity isn’t convinced the scent has lasted.
“I think it’s a unique approach to a Super Bowl ad, because it’s really more a Super Bowl campaign,” said Ciro Sarmiento, chief creative officer, Saatchi New York. “Airing Super Bowl ads a week early happens every year. But never this early.”
The lengthy tease has a good strategic rationale. “There is skepticism from consumers around the long-lasting scent benefit of the product,” he said. “Our celebrity wants to prove the claim himself and put it to the test.”
This is the second campaign for Downy since Publicis Groupe’s Saatchi, part of P&G North America Fabric Care’s Woven Collaborative multi-agency shop, took over from WPP’s Grey on the account. The first effort for Downy Rinse & Refresh featuring a singing Backstreet Boys poster took a similarly fun approach.
Given that it comes with a Super Bowl campaign that could generate substantial buzz, winning Downy turns out to be a bigger prize for Saatchi.
“Daniel and I are friends, very good friends,” Sarmiento said. “We respect each other. We’ve always followed each other’s careers when we were working in different companies and groups and agencies.”
Sarmiento said the plan was always that he would lead Saatchi New York’s “vision of the creative work” from there on out.
Multiple ads leading up to the Super Bowl
Downy Unstopables previously ran a prominent Super Bowl pre-game commercial during its launch year in 2012 featuring Amy Sedaris in a play on the famous 1979 Coke Mean Joe Greene Super Bowl spot. But it hasn’t previously run an ad during the game. Details on the length of the spot and placement in the game remain to be determined, though the brand does have a contract with Fox, a spokesman said.
Downy is planning six or seven video ads in the campaign leading up to the Super Bowl, plus additional social media content, hoping to provoke a “Masked Singer” style guessing game about who is the celebrity under the hoodie. Included in the effort will be hints and “Easter eggs” within videos and other social content for brand fans to find along the way to the finale, Sarmiento said.
Downy is claiming its scents can last as long as 25 weeks in some club store marketing, noted Jenny Maxwell, senior brand director on Downy for P&G.
“What we love about Downy Unstopables is that it’s a big, bold, feisty brand that is able to have a little bit more fun than maybe some other brands in our portfolio,” Maxwell said. “What I love about the idea is that we’re not taking ourselves too seriously.”
Yet it’s also a marker of gravitas for Unstopables, a Downy sub-brand launched a little over a decade ago that now has reached nearly $1 billion in annual sales in its own right, Maxwell said.
