My art director partner, Gordon Smith, once told me he was driving through flood water in the country when he saw someone he knew, stuck.
It was Andrew Cracknell, executive creative director of WCRS, who was also in a Range Rover.
Andrew said his engine was wet and wouldn’t start.
So Gordon took Andrew’s spark plugs out and sprayed WD-40 on them, then he put them back and Andrew’s engine started.
I said that was amazing, I didn’t know WD-40 could do that.
Gordon said the name WD-40 stood for Water Displacement, 40th formula.
So it dispersed water, which was why it got the wet spark plug to work.
WD-40 was developed in 1953 to protect the Atlas missile from rust and corrosion.
I was online recently when an ad came up: Get Gum Out of Your Hair with WD-40.
I thought that’s amazing – I thought the only way to get gum out of hair was with scissors.
A bit later I saw another ad: Stop Your Windscreen Icing Up with WD-40.
I thought that’s a great idea, it would save me scraping the ice off every morning.
Then, later still, I saw another ad: Get Paint and Scratches off Your Car with WD-40.
I’d previously bought a bottle of Liquid Scratch Repair Kit on the internet – it didn’t work.
So I sprayed some WD-40 on the scratches on my car and rubbed, and it came up perfectly.
Next time I saw a WD-40 ad in my feed, I clicked it and went to a site with 58 different uses for WD-40.
Everything from cleaning stains off the toilet bowl, to fixing cracked screens on iPhones, to getting burns and stains out of carpets, to destroying wasp nests, to dissolving Super Glue, to cleaning BBQ grills, to removing coffee or wine stains, to getting crayon marks off the wall, to removing oil stains from the driveway, to protecting leather sofas, to getting rings unstuck from fingers, to making your fridge gasket last longer, to cleaning your hands.
There are several brilliant pieces of thinking here.
First, everyone has at least one can of WD-40 in their house, shed or garage.
They bought it once and only use it when something is rusty or stuck.
They’ll never replace it unless it runs out, and it won’t run out unless they use it.
So this is a great way to get people to think of new uses for their existing can of WD-40 and need to replace it.
Which makes it a great campaign for high-involvement consumers.
Second, it speaks to all the people who never bought a can of WD-40.
This tells them that it’s so much more than just oil.
The 58 different uses show something for everyone, from teenagers to old ladies.
So it’s also a great campaign for low-involvement consumers.
Finally, the media is a terrific fit.
Instead of a brand ad on TV, online media gives them the flexibility and the ubiquity to target their users and deliver much more information than they could get in 30 seconds of TV, at a fraction of the price.
This is a really smart use of online media because it uses the media for everything other media can’t do.
Instead of just using TV commercials online, as pre-rolls that get skipped after five seconds.
This way, cookies track your audience and you know which messages to serve individuals.
Each of the uses is a 10-second read to an interested audience.
The cumulative effect is like a long infomercial full of useful information.
You’re talking to someone who actually wants the information you’ve got to tell them.
So the emotional build you’re left with is a powerful brand campaign.
THAT’S using online for something you couldn’t do in any other media.
Dave Trott is the author of The Power of Ignorance, Creative Blindness and How to Cure It, Creative Mischief, Predatory Thinking and One Plus One Equals Three