Creative impulse
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Dixcel manufacturer Jamont is putting pounds 2.5m behind a campaign that it hopes will restore the high profile that the KittenSoft brand enjoyed in the Seventies.
The 20- and 40-second spots, which are Bates Dorland's first TV work for Jamont since winning the account last spring, promote a new tissue manufacturing process, in which thousands of tiny "dimples" seal the sheets together. But the ads take a tongue-in-cheek approach to the familiar claims about softness, satirising the usual advertising ploys of this market.
The client: Jamont UK Ltd
John Costigan, marketing manager
"This is the relaunch of an existing brand, and the objective was to improve our distribution and increase our market share for that brand.
"Two years ago, we set about making a better toilet tissue with our technologists, and came up with micro-embossed toilet tissue. After home usage tests, we knew that KittenSoft was a superior product to what we had before. We needed to bring this point of difference home to consumers, and our brief to Bates was that we wished to relaunch a brand to existing customers, and also wanted to bring new consumers on board.
"We wanted to stand out from the crowd, and emphasise our key product difference: "dimples" is consumer language for the micro-embossing. By marrying factual presentation and normal toilet tissue advertising, we're saying that whichever way you look at it, we're better - we're so good that we can deliver on both levels."
The agency: Bates Dorland
Jon Canning, copywriter
"We first of all had to get across the revolutionary features of this toilet paper, such as the dimples and the fact that they prevent the layers from separating. But we wanted something that would allow us to have a bit of fun with the product, as well as concentrate on the technical side.
"We came up with the hard sell vs soft sell idea, where you're first given the technical data, together with the ad man's passionate belief in the product. But the other marketing guy, Brian, wants it sold the other way, concentrating on the softness. There was no avoiding the fact that it's called KittenSoft, so we had to have kittens present, but we didn't use them in the usual way.
"In the bathroom product market you can take the soppy route, like Andrex with their puppy, or the technical route, where you get a close-up of, say, a toothbrush, showing you the bristles and the angled head. This advert offers a slight pastiche of both. I'd describe it as Andrex on ecstasy, really."
SCOTT HUGHES
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments