It’s cold and flu season, which means it's prime time for consumers to reach for antibacterial hand wipes. And while Wet Ones has been keeping hands clean consistently over the last half century, the Edgewell Personal Care brand had not released a major campaign in years.
Wet Ones decided to change that, seeking to create something fresh, bold and different that could capture the attention of a younger audience. The brand teamed with BBH USA and kept the brief loose: get the brand back out there and in conversations. The result, “Just For Hands,” launched last month and grew from a simple insight: More than 50% of consumers have used hand wipes on an intimate area, according to research commissioned by the brand.
“It was a bit surprising to us because it wasn't something that we had necessarily seen before,” said Nicole Harris, head of marketing for sun and skin at Edgewell. “We can do something with this. This is funny. How can we play on this?”
The insight about how consumers were using hand wipes inspired early rounds of work that played off inanimate objects like peaches. But BBH kept pushing and landed on an idea that the team calls “hand butts:” extreme close-ups of fingers that look like posteriors.
“We wanted to create a double take – that split second when you think you're seeing one thing, and then realize you're looking at something completely different,” said Yohan Daver, executive creative director at BBH USA.
“The craft had to make the illusion feel completely real, and by taking the idea across New York City at scale, we're turning one clever visual device into a much bigger cultural moment,” Daver added.
Subways and social
Created with photographer Ale Burset, a winner of more than 60 Cannes Lions awards, the campaign had a comprehensive out-of-home media plan including LinkNYC kiosks, transit shelters, digital newsstands, wild postings, bus wrapping and a Time Square takeover. Plus, interactive walls dispensed travel packs and individual wipes to pedestrians.
Originally, Wet Ones’ media plan included ads throughout the New York City subway system, where the variety of handheld surfaces like railings and straps provide a “torture test” for the product, Harris explained. That changed when the Metropolitan Transportation Authority vetoed the “Just For Hands” creative.
“When they refused us for being a little too risque, it was perfect,” Harris said. “It added juiciness to the story, but it also forced us to think quickly in terms of the other touch points. How do we want to evolve the media plan to still have the impact, but also take advantage of this from a storytelling perspective?”
Wet Ones’ PR team used the rejection as an angle to drive earned media. The brand also partnered with Kyle Cooke, of reality TV series “Summer House,” for a social stunt that brought a hand butt to celebrity gossip account DeuxMoi. Then, the “Just For Hands” campaign became the target of some friendly banter from Goodwipes, a brand of flushable wipes — not hand wipes — that isn’t a Wet Ones competitor.
“We [wanted] to get a response up in Times Square, so that was probably a record that I've seen, in my tenure for the company, for us to turn around a piece of creative and get it up within hours,” Harris said. That type of speed and agility was central to the “Just For Hands” campaign.
“We kicked it off at the end of August, so really fast turn out of the gate, but [it] led to amazing work,” Harris said. “We're getting great consumer response, but our retailers were really excited about it, too.”
