A creative long-term TTL communications programme to drive brand affinity amongst a core target audience.

The Challenge

Connect parents of 2-5 yr. olds with the Play-Doh brand on an emotional level to ensure retention of market share over cheaper / own label dough brands. 

The Approach

Position Play-Doh as the parental ally to the pressure. The remover of guilt; the chilled to the highly strung; the unstructured to the instructions.

Because parents are bombarded with what they ‘should’ be doing to support their children’s development and creativity. Child Yoga, Children’s French, this app, that app. But the truth is that 73% of homes have two working parents. So, they don’t have time to even empty the bin, and they don’t need to be made to feel bad about it. 

The Solution

'Parenting is Messy’. A funny, emotive TLL platform that doesn’t judge the time poor, ball dropping, accidentally swearing, forgot the nursery world book day outfit parents but instead sees them and reassures them through acknowledgement of the normality (and hilarity) messy parenting.

Our insights found that 67% of parents feel an overwhelming pressure to be ‘perfect’ so we launched Play-Doh’s first-ever book Notes on Messy Parenting. The book featured open, honest and often hilarious anecdotes from a number of well-known celebrity and influencer parents. We hosted a Play-Doh event, House of Messy Parenting, encouraging parents to shed their parenting guilt while their kids embraced the mess with Play-Doh.

The Impact

78% share of voice against key competitors during the campaign period (53% YoY increase).