Dieste Harmel & Partners

Dieste Harmel & Partners for Clorox.

Get it Dieste Harmel. Finally, someone makes an ad for laundry detergent or supplementary laundry materials that is more interesting than side-by-side comparisons of white socks, or grass stains, or a maternal figure who is way too excited about clean clothes. I think much of the advertising created for laundry products is not only boring, but it makes way too big of a deal out of cleaning your clothes; everyone does laundry, and it's not a big event like it is portrayed in commercials. People just want to do their laundry and have their clothes be clean. That's it. The over-acting is unnecessary and quite frankly, it has become embarrassing. On top of that, why do the people in commercials start cuddling and rubbing their clean towels all over their face as soon as they come out of the dryer? You just washed that, and now it's dirty again.

With this ad, Dieste managed to integrate the emotional facet of doing laundry without over-doing the emotion. Usually parents are the ones doing their kids' laundry, and it's a sign of how much you love and care for them, and in this spot, the viewer still gets that point without the side-by-side stain comparisons. The animation in this ad reminds me a little of the "Happiness Factory" spots for Coca-Cola, which were done by Wieden+Kennedy. Both employ imaginative creatures in an extravagant course of action that culminate in, what is presumed to be, the completion of a relatively simple task. These spots are well-crafted and fun to watch, and the end of the Clorox spots pay off; the copy is relevant to the previous animation and captures the honest relationship between mother and child that is often missing from the cliche laundry ads.