The Championship Whites Free Tennis Lessons campaign, through Arc, is Ariel's biggest ever promotion and its first on-pack themed push in two years. The activity has a lot to live up to: it builds on last year's off-pack promotion, which was tailored for Tesco and offered free tennis lessons to consumers who filled in a leaflet and sent off proof of purchase.
That gave the brand its highest value share of the half-billion pound market since July 1997 - 25.1 per cent for four weeks to 19 July 2003 (ACNielsen). P&G's share of the laundry category as a whole rose to 51.8 per cent in June and 52.1 per cent in July as a result of the push.
This year sees that concept roll out to roughly seven-and-a-half million packs of Ariel Bio and Non Bio.
Ariel assistant brand manager Martin Stead is convinced that offering consumers the chance to redeem a free tennis lesson from an LTA coach will exceed 2003 results, consolidate Ariel's association with the LTA, and deliver uplift that exceeds previous activity.
Participants receive a directory of 1,000 coaches around the UK and can then organise a free lesson at their convenience in an offer that is unlimited for households.
The campaign is being supported by two ad bursts fronted by British number one tennis pro Tim Henman. There's also a PR push and joint-funded posters with Zanussi at Waterloo and Southfields stations - the main transit points for travellers to Wimbledon. Extra fill, in-store activity and a dedicated website complete the push.
Playing catch-up
With Ariel the UK's second best-selling laundry brand, the objective is to close the share gap against Unilever's Persil, which took the top spot from Ariel five years ago. Persil has about 27 per cent of the market to Ariel's 21 per cent, but that gap has been narrowing by about a percentage point in each of the past three years.
Ariel is P&G's main brand in a portfolio that also includes Daz, Bold, Dreft and Fairy Non Bio. The portfolio commands about 50 per cent of the branded market, against Unilever's 34 per cent. "Ariel is the flagship product that offers best performance and it is where we introduce innovations and new technologies first," comments Stead.
But laundry is a difficult category that faces almost-unique challenges: there's low branded association with advertising, admits Stead, and executional cut- through is low compared with other categories. Marketing activity has low spontaneous recall and struggles to make an impact. This has prompted an upsurge in themed promotional activity in recent years as the major brands struggle to put some excitement back into the category.
"Advertising has been quite generic until recently, so you are now seeing brands trying different things, such as Surf linking up with Keith Harris and Orville," says Stead.
Own label poses a minor threat in the UK, where consumers show greater loyalty to branded laundry products. It's the battle for retail space that is more of a concern for brands: as supermarkets introduce more products to shelves, the space given over to boxes of detergent is under threat and brands have to justify it.
Value erosion is another challenge, notes Stead. "The sector is very competitive and we need to retain profitability despite retailer price wars." According to Stead, P&G brands have managed to maintain full price better than those of Unilever, which he estimates had more than 50 per cent of its volume share sold on promotion, compared with between 20-30 per cent of P&G's last year.
Despite the pressure to cut price, Stead acknowledges that retailers are also keen to run non price-related activity. "We have linked Disney with Fairy Non Bio, and Bold has linked with Lotto. It brings news and excitement to a sector that is otherwise not very exciting."
He points out that one of the main differentiators for Ariel is the whiteness it produces. In the past, Ariel marketing followed the classic "man in a lab" technique of demonstrating the product's effectiveness, but today's customers need a modern treatment.
LTA sponsorship
This is where the brand's tie-up with tennis comes in. The idea was introduced three years ago with a celebrity ad featuring Henman that was devised as the result of consumer research that revealed tennis as the favourite sport of the brand's core 20- to 55-year-old female market.
"We researched a number of different routes about communicating whiteness, and the tennis link came out top," says Stead.
With whiteness being Ariel's point of difference, and Wimbledon being intrinsically about whites, the link was natural and delivered immediately - Saatchi & Saatchi ads in 2002 featuring Henman taking off his whites and throwing them to a tennis crowd saw Ariel's share jump to a high of 23 per cent.
As well as the ads, P&G sponsors LTA tennis activities from grass-roots level upwards. The company funds the LTA's Champions of the Future programme, which hopes to unearth new tennis stars. And this year, it's running Ariel Tennis Ace in conjunction with the LTA.
And as well as raising the profile of tennis, the Championship Whites campaign could help direct future players to tennis clubs. Young players with potential could then be fast-tracked through the Ariel Champions of the Future scheme.
This is a key aim of the LTA and one with which Ariel has linked, says Arc account director Matt Tabb. "Tennis' biggest challenge is translating the interest over the two weeks of Wimbledon into something longer term, and we've been able to help them do that."
But this summer will see Henman pitted against another squeaky clean sporting ambassador in a bid to prove who has the whitest whites. Persil has enlisted Liverpool and England footballer Michael Owen for a pre-Euro 2004 push.
Sporting overkill?
Given the scale of sporting links this summer, with both the football championships and the Olympics, isn't Stead worried that Ariel will be lost in the flood? Not a bit of it. "The trade loves the offer and knows it has been successful for two years running so will be successful again," he states. "Every man and his dog will be linking with football this year and the consumer will probably be fed up of it." Also, given the bad press currently surrounding the game, sponsors might well be thinking again about football, he adds.
That's not to say the brand didn't think about the impact of football, but Tabb says Arc decided to stick to its guns. Although this is the final year of Ariel's involvement with the LTA, and there's no indication of a renewal of the deal, Tabb insists there was more value in "concentrating on making Ariel's tennis link as compelling as possible".
With P&G having invested £15 million in tennis campaigns over the past three years, it was important to get a concept to tie things together.
"Last year we used a more integrated approach with more disciplines, but did not have a big idea that hooked things together," says Tabb. "That's what we've strived towards this year. The idea is encouraging mass participation in tennis and delivering the message about Ariel's involvement."
Stead concurs: "The whole campaign was a bigger scale initiative last year, and we didn't have 2002's Jubilee or World Cup complicating things. We are growing year on year and Championship Whites is helping us do it."
If the activity is as successful as last time, Stead will be happy. A similar performance from Tiger Tim during the Wimbledon Championships would simply be the icing on the cake.
IN MY VIEW - 7 out of 10
Before I start, I have to put my hands up. Initially, a feeling of "hard sell" swept over me. Are we really going to drag our core consumers away from their two-week sofa ritual and on to tennis courts around the country? Is it Tim Henman or playing with Slazengers that causes women to tick that box?
But then this is not about getting close to consumers by tapping into existing behaviour - it's about getting close to consumers by helping those closest to them (and consequently exploiting a most innate motivation - the happiness/success of the child).
So what gives Ariel the right? For a start, it has waited for three years and £15 million worth of tennis campaigns to pass before heading on-pack (and even had the patience to test the offer off-pack). In that time, the brand has also shown a commitment to tennis by funding the Champions of the Future programme (rather than simply stealing the connectivity of tennis).
As regards the LTA, the promotion offers two key elements - discovering a successor to Henmania and helping support the coaches by providing opportunities to grow their own databases. This can only help Ariel when it comes to negotiating with the LTA and getting access to solus media opportunities such as clubs.
When it comes to execution, it's great that there are more than 1,000 LTA coaches around the UK, that participation is unlimited and that the promotion will achieve association with a famous event without the cost of sponsorship. The fact that the trade is so excited should also help ensure that no more value is eroded (though some retailers may still look for a brand contribution if prime space is required).
To improve? As you've probably guessed, I like this promotion but the main cause for concern would be the mainstream appeal of tennis outside two weeks in June. I also believe that Ariel might have missed a trick by not exploiting its association with Tim Henman (10 lucky winners get coached by the UK No.1?) or the LTA's links with John McEnroe.
A final observation: here's something for kids with no sugar or fat required - even the Food Standards Agency will be pleased.
Jeremy Cochran, managing director, Catalyst Marketing.
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