Tide Detergent's christmas tree ad bubbles with joy - two steps away from brilliance

with English back translation

how does a detergent product say "merry christmas"? you can have dancing housewives. or dancing detergent boxes. to many that can bereal easy. but the real easy can be real boring.

tide detergent decided it will not take the easy path. and here is what we have, an unexpected and very creative way to say "merry christmas".

not only is it unexpected and very creative, it's also on strategy to the brand and contributes to it's story of efficacy. tide has moved away from it's long standing heritage of powerful suds as a core signal for efficacy in its advertising, but every woman who does hand washing continue to understand what it means and in fact for many of them expect it from their detergent product. strong and abundant suds mean effective detergency in this market.
this chirstmas ad delivers that very well.

it's an almost perfect ad except for two things --- (a) the woman is too pretty, too young and too nice to be the typical labandera (woman who washes clothes). they could have used an on-camera talent who has the looks of a more typical labandera. she looks too classy and too rich and someone who can afford to buy a washing machine. her type is the one who has not done any hand washing at all. and the (b) they could have chosen a more appropriate dialogue for the radio drama that the woman is listening to on her radio. it's a christmas ad, the radio dialogue should have been about christmas, not ordinary time situations. having it as a topic on christmas could have been more emtional and make the ad work harder.

getting an on-cam talent more like real labanderas would have improved the ad's empathy. it hits home harder when the people we see in the ads look like us.

the point of the ad is to deliver a christmas message. this ad could have done that in a much more effective way had they chosen a radio drama dialogue where the setting is christmas. doing that would have allowed them to more actively and directly deliver a christmas message. the way it is now, we sort of assume that is the point of the ad and that happens only at the very end of the ad when we see the suds have formed a christmas tree shape.

what a pity they missed out on those things. it's a great ad, but two things shy of being a brilliant ad.