Pantene: FIRST LIVE BEAUTY AD

Credits & Description:

Category: Fast Moving Consumer Goods

Advertiser: PROCTER & GAMBLE

Product/Service: PANTENE

Agency: GREY NEW YORK

Date of First Appearance: Mar 1 2011

Entrant Company: STARCOM USA, Chicago, USA

Director: Katie Ford (SMG United)

Associate Director: Roslyna Ibrahim (SMG United)

Media Supervisor: Kimberly Sheaffer (SMG United)

NA Hair Care Marketing Director: Julie Marchant-Houle (Procter & Gamble)

NA Pantene ABM: Lawrence Kim (Procter & Gamble)

VP NA Hair: Craig Bahner (Procter & Gamble)

VP- Activation Associate Director: Jamilah Elder (MediaVest)

Producer/Associate Director: Julie Harnik (LiquidThread (part of Starcom MediaVest Group))

VP Account Director & NA HUB Leader: Jean Donahue (Grey)

VP Account Director: Ernesto James (Grey)

Senior Vice President: Nicole Currie (DeVries)

Senior Account Supervisor: Jennifer Celata (DeVries)

Media placement: Live Ad - NBC, Oxygen, Bravo, CityTV - 1 March 2010

Media placement: Job Search - Yahoo! Hot Jobs - 1 March 2010

Media placement: Social Media - Facebook, Twitter - 1 March 2010

Media placement: Webcast - Facebook, Various Websites - 1 March 2010



Insights, Strategy & the Idea

Hair Care ads are filled with promises. Ads with flawless models tell women what to use and how to wear their hair to be completely perfect. Unfortunately, women have discovered first hand that nothing turns out that perfectly in the real world and promises are always broken.



Women don’t want perfect hair – they just want something that will work. Our insight was that women want a product that will maintain their hairstyle from the moment they leave the house until they’re back at home in the evening after a night out on the town.

Our idea was to use the raw, unedited lens of reality programming to show them how the new Pantene holds up from morning until night in the real world. So we created the world’s first live beauty ad to make one lucky Pantene user a reality hair care star.



No more promises of perfection, only reality.



Creative Execution

We put out Pantene’s first ever casting call for our new “girl-next-door” spokesperson via a webcast, job postings and other media. From 200 videos we chose three finalists who styled with Pantene in the morning, and went about their day as they normally would. Ten hours later, Pantene Spokesperson/TV Style Guru Stacy London appeared at the winner’s door - on live TV - to see if Pantene held her hairstyle.



We wanted to prove Pantene’s effectiveness on a real woman in real life, and it paid off. Her hairstyle held even 10 hours later – no tricks, stunts or professional help. The live spot aired simultaneously across four U.S. and Canadian networks in the live season finale of the hit reality show “The Biggest Loser.”



Results and Effectiveness

We earned 1.77 billion impressions, shattering our 1 billion impressions goal. Even better, close to 70% of the total goal came at no incremental cost. Our unprecedented haircare buzz created three times Facebook’s usual response rate, Pantene’s highest-ever engagement rate on Twitter and double our previous total impressions average.



Women were so eager to try the new Pantene, shipments experienced a 46% lift versus the previous record month. Ultimately, P&G called it a new way of brand building, but in reality, all it took was a “show and tell” to get her to believe in Pantene again.