persil dirt is good case study

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Problem Solved #18: How Unilever cleaned up ‘Dirt Is Good’ for a new generation

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By Ellen Ormesher, Senior Reporter

October 13, 2020 | 3 min read

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To mark the launch of our new manifesto – setting out The Drum’s editorial mission to help readers solve their problems – we’re christening today Solutions Day on thedrum.com. And to set the tone, over the course of 24 hours our team of worldwide journalists will be spotlighting 24 recent examples of times when our industry demonstrated its remarkable talent for solving problems.

Persil's evolution of 'Dirt is Good' brought environmentalism to a tried and true campaign.

Problem: At 12 years old, Unilever’s ‘Dirt is Good’ platform is a campaign with real endurance that has transcended continents and mediums. But the brand needed to update the slogan in line with its commitment to spending €1bn changing what it puts in its laundry and cleaning products, and to cut ingredients made from fossil fuels.

Solution: Pivot the message from kids benefiting from getting dirty and instead make the campaign synonymous with one young protagonist doing “something heroic” and reaping the rewards of freedom and discovery.

As part of its parent firm’s ‘Clean Future’ program, Persil bottles are now 100% recyclable and made with 50% recycled plastic. The brand is also looking to source 100% of the carbon in its cleaning and laundry product formulations from renewable or recycled sources by 2030.

As well as making culls to its agency roster and mixing up the way it works with advertising networks, Unilever has been investing heavily in its own data to build out the muscles of its direct-to-consumer strategy and speed up product launches.

For the ‘Real Change’ campaign, the brand is partnering with schools and NGOs over the next year to educate kids on how they can act for good when it comes to the environment. A key KPI will be how many children are reached.

Unilever’s vice-president for home care marketing, Tati Lindenberg, says: “We somehow got stuck two generations back. When we look at the [popularity and impact] of someone like Greta Thunberg among young people, we can see that kids now want a voice and to contribute to the world and society in general.”

Read more Problem Solved articles in our Solutions Day hub .

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Dirt is good: how storytelling gave persil a boost.

Storytelling lives in the banal. It is the way in which human beings make sense of their everyday; the way we make the apparently ordinary significant, imbuing daily routine and happenings with meaning that lives beyond the moment.

Great brands are no different. They create connection and meaning that allows them to transcend their often menial use and go beyond what they do to relate to who we are. They create a narrative that weaves into our greater lives and forges a deeper attachment for the user.

But none of this is by accident. It is the skill of the great marketer to devise these brand stories by means of his or her own ability. Think Nike, generating a near-myth about people's ability to accomplish regardless of gender, race or athletic prowess - the "Just do it" story. From sneakers to desirable must-haves, consistently over three decades, due to the power of the story.

Other great brands have done the same. Apple took the hitherto banal world of what was known as "information technology" and, by means of an altogether more compelling story, created an ever-expanding category that has meaning in all of our lives, from iPods and iPhones to iPads and beyond.

What produces this meaning is the story - one largely told and embodied by the late Steve Jobs himself. It brings new meaning to what computing really can be. A story in which Apple becomes the champion of a world of freedom-enhancing technology, as opposed to the promise of tedium and enslavement that computers stood for prior to the great Apple story of the 20th century. This idea became filmic reality in the "1984 won't be like 1984" ad - the ultimate expression of computers' ability to smash the very totalitarianism for which they had, until that point, stood, adopting George Orwell's tale as the medium for new storytelling within the category.

Weaving a significant narrative

Persil/Omo's "Dirt is good", arguably one of the more notable modern-day brand stories, does the same. It weaves a new narrative of real significance into a category that traditionally would boast about the size of its molecules or the severity of stains it could remove. Now, the narrative is that dirt equates to creativity; and parents aspire to have creative, free-thinking and playing kids, as opposed to those locked into pristine-clean conformity. By establishing this story - one of true human significance that is applicable the world over - it propagates meaning, connection and, ultimately, commercial success. It is among Unilever's biggest brands, exceeding $3bn globally.

Having been at the heart of this piece of brand thinking, it is worth reflecting on the role of storytelling in the conception of the "Dirt is good" idea. A story that would genuinely shift not just the way consumers across every continent related to their laundry, but, just as importantly, the way the brand team internally saw the challenge.

To come up with a story that can permeate the ranks and regions of an organisation as much as it can connect with consumers the world over, we first need to find a way of relating it to ourselves. Before we can create a brand that has a true story to tell consumers, it must hold meaning for the team who will steward and build it.

Only connect

So how do great brand stories emerge?

The "Dirt is good" story started with a degree of soul-searching within the team, to understand the ideology of the Persil/Omo brand across its history and how this related to the team's own beliefs. We found that the brand, in its many guises across the world, was obscuring what had been a very strong agenda of humanity and connection. This was a brand that, across the eras, had connected with the human side of consumers and their relationship with laundry. It may not have been elevated to any great discourse on the notions of freedom or accomplishment, but it was notable nonetheless. This formed a connection within the team, who, in turn, expressed an ambition to be more connecting and meaningful in the world in which their brand existed. This founding ideology - being humanist and connected - formed the backbone of the "Dirt is good" story.

The critical next step was the link to the broader lives of consumers globally. By moving beyond the confines of the washbowl we started to glimpse a world in which our team ideology would relate in ever-more pertinent ways to the consumers our brand sought to serve.

Investigating importance

We spoke one-on-one with consumers the world over, using stimulus that would begin to make connections from their world of banality to greater heights of meaning. By imposing the discipline of asking "Why is that important?" we could touch the very nerves of true emotion, and tap into the way that this bigger emotion could link back to the laundry category. We began to find that there was indeed a deep connection available, via the deep insight that "If you are not free to get dirty, you cannot experience life and grow".

Having located the area within which our story would unfold - where a parent's desire for a creatively unconstrained child relates to everyday dirtiness or cleanliness - we went on to specify the point of resolution the brand would bring. Great brands and brand stories play to a deep desire or resolve a deep tension.

Now, the narrative is that dirt equates to creativity; and parents aspire to have creative, free-thinking and playing kids, as opposed to those locked into pristine-clean conformity.

We located this tension as the counterpointing of disciplinarian parenting versus the universal aspiration for a more libertarian parenting style in the spirit of transgenerational progress. Everyone seeks to feel they are somehow more progressive than the preceding generation. We had found our great point of resolution. The story would start to unfold.

We now sought arenas in which our brand could allow its idea to be experienced by means of brand ritual. We needed to allow consumers to be able to participate in the story, as opposed to merely having it read out to them by means of didactic, one-way TV communication. We identified painting as the first experience platform for the "Dirt is good" ritual and instigated painting competitions from Pakistan to Brazil. Consumers came in droves to experience the idea and prove their own relationship to it founded on such insight into real lives. Later, our story moved to new areas of brand ritual - most notably sport. The indelible connection between playing sport and getting dirty was formed.

Turning to innovation

We then looked to use the "Dirt is good" story to conceive of innovation the brand could bring to the category. This continued to stoke the essential fire within the story, but in a way that was part of the "Dirt is good" brand.

This approach identified new chapters in the Persil/Omo brand story - subplots that would weave the narrative ever-more tightly through the organisation and the consumer world. "Pockets full of promise" proved to be the way to speak about what, hitherto, would have been yet another banal enzyme in search of some monster stain.

Instead, we spoke of children's pockets as the theatre of their experience and repository of all their finds. As such, pockets would get dirty in the service of this freedom and creativity.

Within a relatively short time we had begun to develop a story we would tell, and which would be told time and time again. Wherever we were to travel, the essential narrative of "Dirt is good" would connect. The plot and characters would elaborate and grow, but the essential story would remain the same.

A story that would shift the banal to the truly meaningful, which lives forever.

David Arkwright is a founding partner of global brand-development agency MEAT and the former global brand director for Unilever's laundry business. He is the author of The Making of Dirt is Good.

HOW TO CREATE A MEANINGFUL BRAND THROUGH STORYTELLING

• Locate the point of ideological connection between the team and the brand's past.
• Define how the brand can connect with the consumer's life at a deeper level of purpose and emotion - the "why" beyond the "what".
• Find the brand's point of resolution. What is the deep desire the brand realises, or the deep problem it resolves?
• Define where and how the idea can be experienced by ritual, so that the story is told in experience as much as in words.
• Create new brand chapters via innovation, which is conceived through the brand's story and central idea.

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• Dirt is Good: The Campaign for Play
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One of the most famous purpose branding initiatives comes from Unilever’s OMO/Persil and the Dirt is Good campaign, now operating in 78 nations around the world to address the play deficit and help children rediscover outdoor play. The notion that children need to get outside and get dirty through unstructured play is now a full-fledged movement. But there is still much to do.

In a new global survey of 12,000 parents in ten nations (Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Portugal, South Africa, Turkey, UK, USA and Vietnam), it was discovered that:

1. The majority (56 percent) of children play outside for one hour or less a day. 2. The problem is worse in the U.S. and UK, where respectively 65 percent and 74 percent play outside for an hour or less a day. 3. In many cities, playground space is increasingly in short supply. In Vietnam, for example, 700,000 children in Hanoi are sharing 2,200 playgrounds, of which 70 percent are deserted or barely used because they are in poor condition or badly equipped. 4. Eight in ten parents say that their kids often refuse to play without some form of technology being involved and 60 percent say that their kids do not know how to play unless technology is involved. 5. Eight in ten parents also acknowledge that their kids prefer to play virtual sports on a screen inside rather than real sports outside

So what we have is an imbalance in play. This according to Sir Ken Robinson, an eminent thinker on creativity and education whose  TED talk  in 2006 has been seen over 37 million times. “Screens can be a wonderful source of education and entertainment but children need to play in a wide variety of ways to exercise fully their minds and bodies… this generation is facing a perfect storm of inactivity, with a shortage of outdoor facilities and preference by many children to stay indoors, engaging in inactive types of play.” A recent  Guardian article  shares more on his views and this topic.

This June, OMO/Persil will be organizing the world’s largest Outdoor Classroom Day, aimed at getting kids around the world to learn outside. This takes off from a UK program known as Empty Classroom Day. Parents can sign up their children’s schools at  www.dirtisgood.com .

There is also a dramatic film treatment, “Free the Kids,” set in a maximum security prison in Wabash, Indiana, in which inmates talk about the importance of their daily outdoors time. Toby Dye, director of the film, said, “Inmates get two hours of outdoor time a day, kids are only getting one. I am proud that we have made a film that works on so many levels, powerfully communicating the message in a non-judgmental way.”

One of the essential elements of the program is personal parental involvement in play. My happiest memories are with my kids at the park, finding pieces of used cardboard to accelerate the trip down the stone slide in Central Park, clambering around the jungle gym to hang upside down, playing hide–and-seek in the minerals area of the Natural History Museum (I was asked to leave the Museum once for encouraging my then four year old to slide down a piece of petrified rock) and hours of snowball fights or sledding. I am proud that our team is so deeply involved in the campaign.

This article originally appeared on  6A.M. , Richard Edelman’s blog on trends in communications, issues, lessons and insights.

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Persil announces its plan to evolve its ‘Dirt is Good’ campaign

Persil is looking to source 100% of the carbon in its cleaning and laundry product formulations from renewable or recycled sources by 2030.

Unilever’s vice-president of marketing for home care, Tati Lindenberg, explains why the flagship detergent brand , Persil , is evolving its ‘Dirt is Good’ campaign as part of a strategy designed to tout the FMCG behemoth’s environmental credentials.

At 12 years old, Unilever’s ‘Dirt is Good’ platform is a rarity in modern marketing: a campaign with real endurance that has transcended continents and mediums.

Attached to Persil in the UK, and similar Unilever brands across other markets, since 2008 ‘Dirt is Good’ has woven a narrative of significance into the category, which was previously confined to highlighting how fast grime and stains could be removed in the washing machine.

The slogan has helped build Persil into one of Unilever’s biggest brands (with its value pitted at US$3bn/£2.3bn globally). However, the FMCG giant has spotted an opportunity to bake greater purpose into the platform, by dovetailing with a promise to spend €1bn/£908m changing what it puts in its laundry and cleaning products to cut out ingredients made from fossil fuels.

As part of its parent firm’s ‘Clean Future’ programme, Persil bottles are now 100% recyclable and made with 50% recycled plastic. The brand is also looking to source 100% of the carbon in its cleaning and laundry product formulations from renewable or recycled sources by 2030. Unilever’s vice-president for home care marketing, Tati Lindenberg, was part of the original team behind the slogan – but even she concedes it is time for a change.

“Although people love the idea of ‘Dirt Is Good’, the way we’ve been executing the purpose has been a bit shallow and out of touch with reality. It’s always been about individual kids benefiting from getting dirty,” Lindenberg says, pointing to the fact that the creative has come to be synonymous with one young protagonist doing “something heroic” and reaping the rewards of freedom and discovery.

After doing some research earlier this year alongside creative agency MullenLowe London , Persil realised that kids could no longer relate to the images presented in the ads.

“We got stuck two generations back somehow. When we look at the [popularity and impact] of someone like Greta Thunberg amongst young people, we can see that kids now want a voice and contribute to the world and society in general.”

The result is ‘Real Change,’ which sees Persil take on the new ethos of ‘Dirt for Good’ in a global campaign designed to communicate its brand purpose and the action it’s taking on the environment.

Through a series of assets from 10-second product shots to 70 second-hero films, the campaign will go live on TV, VOD, OOH, social and display throughout the remainder of the year across 40 markets.

The media is being handled by Mindshare , and the work was shot in an environmentally-friendly way; using a network of six like-minded cinematographers from around the globe showing their own families taking part in environmentally-friendly acts, such as planting trees and collecting rubbish from beaches.

In its various guises, Lindenberg says ‘Dirt is Good’ is seen by 1.6 billion people a year (“a bigger reach than Instagram”).

Unilever has been planning this shift in product manufacturing and positioning since August last year.

When Covid-19 hit, the brand considered switching strategy again, but Lindenberg said that Unilever’s in-house ‘people data centres’ – which combine social listening, CRM and traditional market research – persuaded her team that it should stay on course.

As well as making culls to its agency roster and mixing up the way it works with advertising networks, Unilever has been investing heavily in its own data to build out the muscles of its direct-to-consumer strategy and speed up product launches.

Amid the pandemic, Lindenberg says that these hubs are becoming ever more vital to the brand in helping it map out its next move.

“During Covid, [they showed] how fundamental it was for us to step up our hygiene communication,” she says, adding that the data they were seeing at the height of lockdown has persuaded Persil to launch a new range of products focused on killing germs that will hit shelves “in the next three months”.

For the ‘Real Change’ campaign, the brand is partnering with schools and NGOs over the next year to educate kids on how they can act for good when it comes to the environment. A key KPI will be how many children are reached.

“We have a target of working with 10 million young environmentalists. We want those kids to become advocates towards the environment. This is about a change in society and looking beyond our business’s books.”

Lindenberg’s sentiments around brand purpose are also aligned with those of Unilever’s own chief exec Alan Jope, who said last summer that he would eject any brand without purpose from the firm’s portfolio.

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What’s in half a billion homes on the planet?

Published: 13 February 2023

In some 500 million households across the world, you’ll find a product from our Dirt Is Good brand: a level of penetration that has sales topping €4 billion a year. Proving that you can grow a brand to be powerful, purposeful and profitable.

In December 2022, sales of Unilever’s Dirt Is Good (DIG) brand – also known as OMO, Persil, Skip, Surf Excel, Rinso and Breeze, depending on where you live – surpassed the €4 billion mark. There is now a product from the portfolio present in half a billion households.

Given these figures, it’s not surprising that DIG is the world’s largest laundry brand (in terms of household penetration) and the fifth most-chosen FMCG brand. It’s also Unilever’s third-biggest brand after Dove and Knorr.

Since it became the front runner of Unilever’s Clean Future strategy, DIG unlocked unmatched category growth, becoming the No.1 contributor to Unilever’s underlying sales growth in 2022.

As Tati Lindenberg, VP, Marketing, Dirt Is Good, says: “With a relentless focus on superiority coupled with sustainability, the success of Dirt Is Good shows just how a household laundry brand can be purposeful while driving business growth.”

Building a brand that people love

In 2004, we developed an idea that challenged the conventional codes of the commoditised laundry category into a positive source of human growth and development. Since then, the Dirt Is Good idea has led to growth from a €0.4 billion to a €4 billion business today. And it continues to gain momentum.

Within our home care business, DIG is the largest brand, followed by Sunlight at €1.3 billion and Comfort at €1 billion. Every day, the volume of DIG products sold would fill 12 Statues of Liberty. According to Kantar Worldpanel, over 200 individual product packs are sold every second, making DIG incremental sales in 2022 increase by an additional €1 million every day.

Innovating for people and the planet

As part of our Clean Future commitment, the brand stepped up its efforts to address the climate crisis by rethinking the way its products were created, manufactured and packaged so that they remained tough on stains but were kinder to the planet.

Among a host of initiatives, DIG introduced plant-based stain removers and cardboard packaging, cut its use of virgin plastic and pioneered ingredients made from industrial waste emissions. In 2022, the brand launched its most sustainable capsule ever, featuring a new formula for high performance on a low-energy cold wash.

Inspiring kids to take action

The move to create the DIG brand pioneered a marketing approach that focuses on purpose as well as superior performance. Today, the Dirt Is Good tagline and the visual ‘Splat’ that accompanies it have become symbols of the brand’s purpose: to inspire people to dream and dare in the knowledge that DIG products will get even the dirtiest clothes clean again.

In 2020, research revealed that DIG needed to pivot to address the evolving attitudes of both children and parents. So now, through the Dirt Is Good Project, which is live in the UK, Brazil, India, Thailand, Turkey, Vietnam and Chile, the brand is working with NGOs, schools and communities to inspire 10 million people to take action for the causes that matter to them.

Take a look behind the brand to find out more about DIG’s products and purpose, and watch a few of the brand’s most iconic ads.

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MullenLowe UK

Unilever’s detergent brands (OMO, Persil, Surf Excel, etc) operate in a low interest, low engagement category, where preference is usually stimulated by emphasising product attributes and functionality…and more often through price promotion.

Overall category growth was stagnating as the consumer found it difficult to differentiate between increasingly commoditised brands.

The challenge was finding an idea that could genuinely differentiate Persil/OMO in the consumer’s eyes AND win the support of multiple markets.

Creative Approach

We articulated this distinctly anti-category view as a shift from ‘stains are the enemy’ to ‘stains are a child’s best friend and developed the globally renowned Organising Idea ‘Dirt is Good’ (‘DiG’.)

‘DiG’ became the radical new expression of our Brand Purpose for Persil/OMO that ‘to develop their potential, human beings need to be free to experience their world.’

Crucially, the brand and agency team enshrined this thinking in a ‘Brand Triangle’ (an exercise that we at the agency now apply to every major brand repositioning exercise) that firmly ties together product benefit and brand purpose with product functionality, to ensure all communication is grounded in a credible product truth.

We aimed to identify the motivations and drivers of modern parents through research. It threw up many insights, but one was very striking in its simplicity and truth: a child’s development will always be a mother’s first priority (and never a detergent!). Progressive mothers everywhere recognised intuitively that their child’s development required them to play and in that process they get dirty.

This led us to a key question: if getting dirty actually helps a child, what is the role of a detergent brand that wants to be the friend and champion of modern mums? 

The insight led to the brand team’s decision to overturn the category convention that a ‘Good mum keeps her kids clean’ and begin championing the mother who encourages her child to develop their potential – regardless of dirt.

Recent Developments

‘Dirt is Good’, was designed to function as a ‘North Star’ and rallying cry for a brand that championed child development. Over the last decade, the DiG team has gone on to work with governments, NGOs, parents, educators and other brands to create opportunities for children everywhere to play, get dirty, and learn from experience.

 Most recently, we’ve worked with Persil to adapt our long running ‘Dirt is Good’ positioning and reaffirm its relevance in the time of COVID-19. As the crisis came closer to home, we had 10 days (working in isolation) from kick-off to campaign to evolve our positioning to ‘Home is Good’ - Allowing Persil to celebrate and encourage people to stay at home. Social channels have been key in driving our message across.

Persil has grown into the world’s No.1 fabric cleaning brand (in the markets we operate) and Unilever’s second-biggest brand.

From a €250 million brand to a €4 billion brand – a staggering 1,500% increase, adding €828 million in the last three years alone.

Growing at 8.1% in Compound Annual Growth in the last three years.

One of the most awarded global campaigns for advertising’s oldest and traditionally most functional category clocking over 10 effectiveness awards including nine Cannes Lions.

MullenLowe: Persil, Dirt is Good

This is the brand story behind the creation and implantation of the Dirt is Good positioning.

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2017 commended: Persil, purpose driven - case study

The problem: fading brand relevance was dragging down sales 97% of households in the UK use detergent, and the frequency of washing loads per household runs at one every other day.

And yet no one likes thinking about or doing the laundry; it’s a low interest category which to win in, brands have to somehow be salient and relevant.

Historically Persil had been very successful at this (so much so that as a teenager in the 1980s Victoria Beckham declared that she wanted to be "as famous as Persil Automatic").

And in the late 90s we achieved cultural relevance by disrupting the category (which focused on clothes which are whiter than white), with our belief that ‘Dirt is good’ and a mission to get kids playing more and getting dirty.

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• Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

Unleashing the potential of young people to create a better world

The ways we have been living have led to major threats to our natural world. the younger generation will experience the most serious consequences of these actions. these rapid changes are taking a toll on young people’s mental well-being. research shows that one of the best antidotes to anxiety about social and environmental issues is action.

New research commissioned by the Persil Dirt Is Good Project explored young people’s values and how they perceive the values of others. The study found that almost all the young people surveyed said that caring for nature and other people is important to them but that they don’t think others share their compassionate values . Fears about not fitting in and being labelled with unhelpful stereotypes prevent them from expressing their true values to their peers.

of young people surveyed prioritised compassionate values over self interest values

said caring for other people was 'quite' or 'very important' to them

said caring for the natural world was 'quite' or 'very important' to them

Only 14% of young people surveyed prioritised self-interest values over compassionate values. BUT by age 16-18, almost half (48%) of them thought that other young people would prioritise self-interest values. The misperception that most others don’t care when they actually do is known as the values-perception gap. This study is the first to show that it exists in children and young people. It found that young people are affected by the values-perception gap in the following ways:

• They have lower emotional well-being
• They feel more worried about the future
• They are less likely to act on the issues they care about  

This limits them from reaching their potential as changemakers and responsible citizens.  The Persil Dirt Is Good project focuses on helping young people to believe that taking action on social and environmental issues is not the niche but the norm.

The Persil Dirt Is Good Project focuses on helping young people to believe that taking action on social and environmental issues is not the niche but the norm.  

The Project has commissioned a white paper, Generation Action: How to unleash the potential of children and young people to take positive action and create a better world for all . The Paper uncovers the widespread misperception that humans are inherently self-interested, and highlights how addressing this misperception could be key in efforts to promote and sustain youth action on social and environmental issues, and consequently the well-being of young people. 

In addition to the white paper, Global Action Plan have developed a research paper containing a full overview of our research with young people, including the methodology and statistical analysis. It also contains a broader discussion on the potential societal factors that we hypothesise are contributing to the values-perception gap in young people and how we are working to tackle them.

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Laundry brand says: “Dirt is Good” in their new TVC.

Unilever needed a TVC to launch an exciting new Omo (Australia) and Persil (NZ) product, their EcoActive laundry detergent. The ad would be used across TV, YouTube and Social channels.

We put a brief out to our network to source a creative idea that would communicate the brands purpose “ Dirt is Good ”, in conjunction with both the Eco and performance benefits of the product. The brand was seeking to create an asset that evoked an emotional connection from consumers, as well as getting the Eco message across in a way that was different to category norms.

Through Genero, Unilever worked with Production Company Sherpa to develop and produce their creative idea. The final content is a great example of how to showcase a brands purpose and product benefits simultaneously. The main message is around the brand’s commitment to preserving the world’s greatest playground – nature – whilst also maintaining the trusted power of Omo/Persil. Thus, Omo/Persil EcoActive is ‘tough on stains, not on nature’.

“We’ve had a great time working with Genero on developing our brief and choosing the perfect concept for the new OMO/ Persil Eco campaign. From start to finish we found the team professional, enthusiastic, the process easy to follow and the online platform an easy way to review creative and provide feedback. We would definitely work with Genero again!" Monique Fehon, Senior Brand Manager, OMO/Persil ANZ, Unilever

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How Persil freed the kids

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This article reveals how Persil, the laundry detergent brand, found a fresh insight that would revive its 'Dirt is Good' campaign and resonate across markets.

This case study explains how Unilever uncovered a global truth to connect with mothers and promote its various washing detergent brands.

This article looks at the way in which Twitter contributes to the new way of TV watching, exploring how social and TV feed off each other to create new opportunities.

This report uses neuroscience testing to argue that people engage more with US TV shows on social media when the content is relevant to them.

This article examines what Millennials are like as consumers and how best to market to them.

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A community of educators empowering students to take climate action

Powering up young people to take positive action for a better world.

The Dirt Is Good Schools Programme is an exciting new opportunity for students in primary and secondary schools, delivered nationally by award-winning youth training organisation Future Foundations in partnership with Global Action Plan and Persil.

What is involved? Students in Key Stages 2 and 3 are supported to take action on environmental and social issues that they care about. Using quality resources, including an online portal, they will complete projects and activities that will see them develop new skills and create positive change. Teachers are provided with induction webinars and complimentary online CPD training to support them in their role.

How do I sign up? Click here to register and find out more. Once the online form has been completed, you will gain access to the online portal, where you will find the programme handbook and supporting materials. 

Any questions? If you have any questions prior to registering, please contact our Dirt Is Good team by emailing:  [email protected] .

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Dirt is good. And always will be.

Dirt is good: an odd thing for a laundry detergent brand to say.

But we believe it. We believe that dirt and mess help unleash human potential. So we’re here to inspire people to take action and leave us to worry about the dirt after.

Over 20 years, we’ve helped millions of children get out and get to know the world they live in. To learn, explore and get messy along the way.

We sponsored Outdoor Classroom Day and reached millions of children across 100 countries

We worked with Outdoor Classroom Day to help with their mission: encourage more children to spend time outside. Because they believe outdoor play is as important for children’s development as learning to read and write is. And we agree.

We also wanted to prove to parents that dirt really is good. That their children need the freedom to explore, learn and experience the world around them. And that they can rest safe in the knowledge that we’ll be able to tackle any stains their kids might get along the way.

We know that they have environmental concerns, which can affect their mental health and make them feel alone. So we want to inspire them to do more, to take action, and to feel empowered to do so.

So naturally they feel anxious about wanting to shield their children. Should they protect their children, and stop them from exploring and caring about the world around them? Or should they give them the freedom to head out and take action for what they care about?

We believe that protecting our children from the issues in the world around them only leads them to feeling more isolated – because they’re all too aware of them anyway. So we’re not only inspiring children to get out in the world and get messy while taking action on things they care about, but asking their parents to encourage them too.

Taking action helps children’s wellbeing

Young people flourish when they know they’re not alone. And taking action helps reduce their anxiety. By bringing people together, not only we can help build a better future, but we can help children develop a sense of purpose, and embrace the collaborative work that is key for development. And key for inspiring them to look after the earth they live on.

Our mission is to help 10 million young people take action for a better world .

So we’ll continue to work with parents, NGOs and educators to empower young people to take action. And worry about the stains later.

By bringing people together, not only we can help BUILD A BETTER FUTURE, but we can help children DEVELOP A SENSE OF PURPOSE.

*Young people (UK) research conducted by Global Action Plan in July 2020. **Parent research conducted by Edelman Data & Intelligence team in July 2020.

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Unilever: Dirt Is Good Academy

The 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are an urgent call for action. They have been designed to save our planet; focusing on ending poverty, improving health and education, reducing inequality, spurring economic growth, tackling climate change, and so much more. Aiming to galvanise a generation of children into acting on some of the world’s biggest issues, the team at Persil’s Dirt Is Good Project asked us to help create a digital education programme that would align to the UN SDGs and inspire behaviour change in kids.

Content Creation

The Dirt Is Good Project aims to inspire children to take more of an interest in the world around them. The digital education programme needed to include content that was globally translatable, educational, and most importantly, fun. With this in mind, we created The Dirt Is Good Academy, a brand-new educational programme that aims to create real, positive change among its target audience of children aged 12 and under. Brought to life with engaging visuals, gamification and customisable avatars, this programme guides the user through a series of missions, highlighting how they, themselves, can be part of the solution.

On entry to the programme, users play a quirky hypothetical-scenario game that determines their ‘Changemaker Personality Type’. Changemakers then access their very own ‘Mission Log’ dashboard, where they can learn about world issues such as climate change, poverty, and biodiversity loss, all broken down into digestible chunks with actionable tasks they can do to help make a difference.

Content includes short, snappy intro videos to start the learning journey for each topic, listicles of ten ‘fast facts’ – accompanied by engaging imagery, and offline, hands-on tasks such as ‘Start a Food Compost’ – where users are encouraged to take action against food waste and the consequences of intensive farming. Challenges are stored in their Mission Log dashboard as a tickable list, for them to complete in their own time. The programme acts as a safe space for like-minded compassionate young people, designed to lift and empower them to take action for good.

Brand Impact

A huge part of this brief was measurement – how were we going to prove the programme effectively creates Changemakers in the real world? For this, we decided to use a pre and post-topic emoji-style rating to measure kids’ propensity to act before and after engagement in the content, then measure the amount of ‘Challenges’ being ticked as complete. The Dirt is Good Academy soft-launched in the U.K. in February 2021 and in its first 4-weeks smashed our initial targets with over 700 registrants. This programme has been fantastic at educating kids on challenging topics in a positive, inspiring and empowering way. After a successful launch in the UK, we were asked to adapt the platform for the Thai market to inspire behaviour change in a whole new audience

STRATEGY: Education, Creative, Purpose. INSIGHTS: Content research & verification, Consumer research. CONTENT: Creation. PLATFORMS: Games, Website.

GOAL 1: No Poverty GOAL 2: Zero Hunger GOAL 3: Good Health & Wellbeing GOAL 4: Quality Education GOAL 5: Gender Equality GOAL 6: Clean Water & Sanitation GOAL 7: Affordable & Clean Energy GOAL 10: Reduced Inequalities GOAL 11: Sustainable Cities & Communities. GOAL 12: Responsible Consumption Production GOAL 13: Climate Action GOAL 14: Life Below Water GOAL 15: Life On Land GOAL 16: Peace, Justice & Strong Institutions

Check it out for yourself, here (sign-up required).

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Unilever Persil

“Dirt is Good!" Learn how Persil uses Klear’s global influencer platform to find the most relevant micro-influencers to partner with, for a campaign reaching one million people across Europe.

Meltwater Influencer Marketing helped Persil:

Identify the best influencers for the campaign

Manage the influencer outreach campaign

Track progress and measure campaign success

“Meltwater Influencer Marketing is the best platform to build influencer programs!”

Gladys Diaz, Unilever

Persil is a German laundry detergent brand, manufactured and marketed by Unilever. As a leading family brand, Persil wanted to encourage parents to spend more time outdoors with their kids. Under the tagline “Dirt is Good” Persil launched a social media campaign in multiple countries across Europe. With Meltwater Influencer Marketing's global influencer platform , the Unilever’s Persil team found the most relevant micro-influencers to partner with and to promote the idea to their audience.

To raise campaign awareness and drive social conversation, Persil decided to partner with family influencers in each country. The brand needed to find the best family and parenting influencers in each country, overcoming language differences, vetting influencers across multiple social platforms, and later on, measuring the campaign performance in each region.

The Persil team used Klear to find mid-tier parenting influencers from Spain, Portugal, Greece, Finland, and France. The team vetted the lists of influencers and picked the most relevant ones according to their Klear profiles. Then influencers then posted updates of their outdoor activities with their kids accompanied by the hashtag  #dirtisgood  in different languages.

With Meltwater Influencer Marketing , the Persil team at Unilever could track campaign performance and create reports to share internally and with partners. This allowed Persil to show the success of their  #dirtisgood  campaign.

• The team identified and collaborated with 17 influencers who collectively created 51 posts
• Generated 92,554 engagement
• Achieved a true reach of 1,009,341

Get in touch to learn more

Meltwater Influencer Marketing helped Persil reach one million people with a cost effective influencer campaign. What could we do for you?