Mr. Clean is one of the most iconic brand mascots in the history of advertising. People really love him, and they connect with him. Some even admit to having a crush on him. It’s weird.
For that reason, when it was time to give him a Facebook presence, the bright minds at Leo Burnett decided to launch him as a real person, so that people could interact with the man, not the brand. I was lucky enough to join the agency and help take this strategy as far as we could go - sometimes to delightfully weird places.
In this universe, Mr. Clean didn’t sling products, he just went about his life (which did, truthfully, involve a LOT of cleaning - the guy is borderline OCD).
The fun was in trying to figure out what weird stuff he might get up to. And to our delight, we discovered that very often, the weirder the stuff, the higher the engagement rates.
As he became more and more of a social media icon, we could turn him into memes in a way that actually made sense - and got shares and comments the likes of which I’ve never seen before or since for a consumer brand.
And then there was this post, which got fewer likes and shares, but definitely haunted way, way more dreams.
I call that a win.
In 2014, Mr. Clean even live-tweeted the Oscars - completely in character. What a time to be alive.
in 2015, Mr. Clean (the brand, not the man) won 2 gold Cassies, one for Packaged Goods and the other for Success on the Global Stage, since the campaign had helped the brand expand into several new overseas markets.
So yeah, I could make a joke about how we cleaned up at the Cassies, but then I’d have to punch myself really hard.
My roles: creative direction, copywriting