Procter & Gamble's Tide turns to Marvel 'Multiverse' with Doctor Strange

Tide has turned to Benedict Wong and the only animated laundry item in the Marvel Cinematic Universe for a new campaign backing Pods. It is also bringing David Harbour back for a social media cameo in his first work for the brand since its highly successful 2018 Super Bowl spots.

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The new ad from Saatchi & Saatchi and Procter & Gamble Co.’s multi-agency Woven Collaborative ties in with the May 6 release of “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.” Wong, who plays Sorcerer Supreme Wong in the movie, turns to Tide Pods to clean a tuna melt glob from Doctor Strange’s Cloak of Levitation.

“We’ve been talking with Disney and Marvel for a while,” said Daniel Lobaton, chief creative officer of Saatchi, New York. “Some that stuck out to us was Dr. Strange’s cape, and we were like, ‘Oh, that’s really fun. This seems like a great entry into pop culture for Tide.’”

It helps that the Cloak of Levitation is the only laundry item in the Marvel universe that seems to operate with a mind of its own, which helped Tide build a chase story line into the ad.

Tide teased the ad and tie-in with a tweet April 14 from Harbour in which a mysterious hand reaches out to steal Tide Pods from his laundry room. That’s the hand of Wong, reaching out to bring in Tide Pods to clean the cloak in the ad that breaking April 19. The involvement of Harbour, who plays Black Widow’s father in the long-delayed movie about her, helped create the nexus for his involvement, which also helped spur some buzz on Reddit.

“We did a deep dive on the social behavior of Marvel fans,” Lobaton said. “There was a lot of speculation, now that the multiverse is open [via Disney+ series “Wandavision” and “Loki,”], as to who will pop up through those portals and what next character will make a cameo.” That made Harbour’s social tease and laundry room to laundry room Pods portal a fit.

Saatchi even reached into the Avengers archive to find a reference by Wong to his love of tuna melts to create the stain that’s central to the ad plot. “There were a lot of little Easter eggs that we were hunting, having a lot of fun as we were writing this,” Lobaton said, noting that Dr. Strange’s gloves also turn up in the laundry room.

“Someone will screenshot that, trust us,” he said, noting that appeal to a rabid fan base will be part of the ad’s appeal.

“The director, Anthony Leonardi, who’s very close to Marvel Studios, brought a lot of knowledge,” Lobaton said.

The spot was produced in partnership between Saatchi & Saatchi, Marvel Studios and Bullitt, a creative studio whose founders include the Russo Brothers, directors of several Marvel films. P&G also enlisted Oscar-winning visual effects company Framestore.

Marvel has “one of the biggest and most engaged fan bases in the country,” said Alex Perez, senior brand director for Tide, so putting as many “nuggets” as possible for fans to search for in the ads was a recipe for engagement. Elements of the campaign will play out in social media through June.

“The fan base is excited,” Perez said, “and we intend to leverage this partnership as much as we can.”