Procter & Gamble – Fairy, the powerful drop that is hard to stop

 

1. What is the observed insight?

Before Fairy launched, consumers did not distinguish dilute dish liquids from concentrated products: at shelf, they chose bigger bottles (or bidons) from well-known brands, thinking it was better value for the money. In reality, consumers dose much more dilute product to get the job done, ending up spending more money and having a greater environmental impact.

Fairy took this challenge to heart: Get consumers to re-think their behavior by communicating that small can be mighty.
 

2. The Nudge

We aimed to re-frame the comparative choice by de-biasing bottle size, and creating salience for economic advantage.

Since launch, the brand message has been about how powerful the product is and how a little amount is enough to do a lot: all our brand building visuals underscore this main idea.

The behavioral nudges were built to consistently prove that 1 bottle of Fairy lasts longer vs. competition, in a local and larger than life way:

• A solitary drop of Fairy on a sponge being used to accomplish the task;
• Piles of dishes, showing how many more plates 1 dose of Fairy can wash vs. 1 dose of competition;
• 1 bottle of Fairy equals 2 bottles of competition;
• Long tables visuals, filled with the many plates that Fairy can clean vs. smaller tables filled with less dishes that the competition can clean.

 As part of the brand communication, Fairy leverages big consumer’ events where we demonstrate its power washing 18000 dishes with one bottle.

Additionally, we leveraged a local celebrity Berna Lacin as a model that Turkish women could readily follow: she helped to drive adoption of the new habit that consumers need to undergo using Fairy and reinforce the message that SMALL CAN BE MIGHTY.

 

3. Evidence path

P&G launched Fairy in 2010 and has now a market penetration of 45%. Since launch, Turkish consumers have:

• Used 300 million fewer bottles in the market
• Used 18,000 fewer tons in plastic
• Saved 15,000 tons of CO2 in transportation

Field evidence:

• In 2010, 60% of the dishwashing liquid market was in the dilute form, now down to 30% (2016).
• Since the Fairy launch, the volume market size has shrunk by 5% (with the number of households increasing by 6%), demonstrating that consumers who have moved to Fairy use less per wash.