Febreze became P&G's latest $1bn brand earlier this year. It will be promoted on TV, in print and across a range of social media websites via the 'Breathe Happy' campaign, which launched in the US earlier this month.
The campaign uses real people to prove Febreze's high-quality odour eliminator credentials by taking them into dirty environments treated with the product and asking them to sniff various materials.
The UK ads, made specifically for market by Grey Düsseldorf, features people being blindfold on the street and led to a dirty flat where they use their noses to assess the smell of the furniture and features.
Instead of finding their surroundings revolting, the people only smell the more pleasant notes of the air freshener brand.
The idea for the new strategy, which moves away from the brand's comedic approach to a "real life" direction, was developed by Grey New York from an idea proposed in a focus group.
Gary Coombe, global vice president of Air Care and Western European homecare for P&G, said: "The campaign was inspired by a consumer in one of our focus groups who said 'you can close your eyes but you can't turn off your nose. That was a very powerful idea for us."
Coombe said the campaign marks the first time an air freshener brand had used "real people" to demonstrate a product's efficacy in this way, and also marked a change for Febreze as it was an idea which P&G felt could be adapted to run on various media.
The ads will break across ITV, Channel 5, E4, and Sky 1 next week, complemented by print adverts in weekly titles including Woman's Own, Heat, Take a Break and monthly titles including Marie Claire, Good Housekeeping, Woman & Home.
Febreze will also seek to leverage the idea across event marketing, digital platforms and specifically social networks, Coombe said.
He said: "We have always had a brand character that has been fun.
"Here we have a brand character which is consistent with the past but from an execution point of view it’s a new departure that can play out in a number of new environments."
The ads will also go live on the brand's Facebook page and on YouTube, where the US ads have already grabbed some attention, Coombe said, boosting the number of its Facebook fans from around 30,000 before the start of its North American campaign to around 476,000.
Coombe said the campaign had been a "break through" for an air care brand in terms of extending its appeal online and building a social media following.
"The difference here is the nature of the campaign. It's real consumers in a social experiment," he added.
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