Households in the UK get through over 110 million plastic laundry containers per year, which end up in landfill, or are  incinerated. This is the insight that sits at the heart of the new campaign for laundry detergent brand, smol to showcase the brand's plastic-free packaging and eco-friendly credentials.

The new campaign created by Mother and Drool, brings to life the shocking statistic with a campaign video that features a vomiting washing machine, throwing up laundry plastic. The artistic outpour of plastic from the machine alerts audiences to the environmental impact of plastic packaging in an engaging entertaining way and goes on to offer an easy solution to the problem - switching to smol. The film was directed by Freddie Powell through Drool, and shot entirely in camera in the UK.

“Deploying a playful metaphor to dramatize the shocking amount of laundry plastic waste the UK goes through attempts to sidestep the inertia in this market. We’re hoping the ‘plastic vomiting washing machine’ will make people smile whilst drawing their attention to the plastic problem,” explains Oli Rimoldi, Creative at Mother.

In the campaign, smol showcases its unique selling point as a pioneer of plastic-free laundry. The campaign aims to reignite conversations around the anti-plastic cause, and provides audiences with an easy fix.

“People are well aware of the need to reduce their plastic waste, but few dwell on laundry - one of those things that we all have to buy and use, and a huge generator of single-use plastic waste. At smol, we’re proud of pioneering the UK’s first plastic-free laundry capsule packaging - and know that if everyone in the UK switched to Smol, we’d prevent 70 million plastic laundry packs going to landfill every year.” explains Hillary Strong, Chief Marketing Officer at Smol. 

The campaign will run for eight weeks on TV and BVOD, complemented with OOH media, underpinned by smol's digital performance media with a media plan designed to cut through the noise and reflect smol’s position as a challenger brand.

By bringing to life a well-known but often ignored issue, the twisted metaphor of a vomiting washing machine is able to both engage and entertain, leaving audiences with both the knowledge and the solution to help solve the issue.