The Clorox Company, the consumer goods manufacturer, is tapping the power of brand purpose as it seeks to connect with consumers in Latin America.

Catalina Abadia, brand engagement lead at The Clorox Co., discussed this subject at the 2019 Festival of Media Latin America (FOMLA).

And she suggested that an important driver of success involves demonstrating how the organisation’s brands fulfil a core underlying mission.

“The end, for me, is the same: it’s all about the brand purpose,” Abadia said. (For more, read WARC’s in-depth report: How Clorox shapes its brand strategy in Latin America.)

For the Clorox bleach brand, for instance, its purpose has been tackling the stereotypical notion that cleaning is “women’s work”, not a job for both genders. “We’re actually trying to reverse that whole situation,” she said.

The typical imagery of a happy, smiling mother loading a washing machine had little connection with reality, Clorox’s research proved.

“Doing laundry is something that none of us enjoys that much,” added Abadia. But, in the end, she offered, cleanliness is a brand attribute that needs to be included in the Clorox messaging.

The answer? Marketing efforts that show “men and women together” taking joint responsibility for keeping – and thus enjoying – a clean house.

A related case in point involves a campaign that ran in Argentina earlier this year that tackled this issue – and built on a tongue-in-cheek expression that whenever a man does domestic chores, he “deserves a monument”

The campaign, from Clorox-owned cleaning brand Ayudin, erected sculptures of women and men doing chores in Buenos Aires – with the male statues missing body parts, to illustrate the fact they do fewer chores than women.

Building on this theme, Abadia suggested that programs of this type elevate Clorox’s brands from being just a product to having a clear purpose. “Instead of perpetuating the problem, we’re trying to find a solution to it,” she said.

Sourced from WARC