Let Me Ask You, Is Every Ad a Tide Ad?

Published: 03/05/2023 by Kayleigh Walter

It's A Tide ad?

I’m sure you’ve heard of the ‘It’s A Tide Ad’ Super Bowl commercial by now. The one with David Harbour from Stranger Things? I mean we’re late getting around to writing about it but you’ve no excuse for not seeing it. Check it out, we’ll wait..

Procter and Gamble worked with Saatchi & Saatchi to create a brilliant and inspiring montage of stereotypical advertisements sharing one thing in common, well two if you include David harbour. The basic idea was to replicate a number of American product advertising cliches and recreate them leaving everyone asking the very same question - Is every ad a Tide Ad? It was a very smart and genius move that had everyone talking about it and many during the Superbowl found themselves wondering with every Ad that played, ‘is this a Tide Ad?’

It was very well thought out because they created something that you couldn't forget and it was targeted to those in the Stadium, making their audience question every Ad they saw. By putting a spin on the cliches and using a well-loved actor like David Harbour, they were able to create a fun loving character who the audience were happy to follow throughout his advertising journey. They peppered their Ads throughout the game, ultimately hijacking the airtime and ensuring no matter what ad was showing or what it was selling, they wanted everyone to remember their Ad, reminding the audience to question themselves. - Could this be another Tide Ad?

Tide paid for 90 seconds of airtime and 10 seconds of billboard time costing Proctor and Gamble tens of millions of dollars to run these ads, but why? Why would Tide, an American laundry detergent feel the need to spend that much money on advertising its product? I'm sure there are a number of reasons that could have resulted in them making the decision to join the Super Bowl line up because let's face it, half of the people watch it for the game, while the other half watch it for the ads' so it's a great platform to advertise your product. One potential reason could be because of The Tide Pod Challenge. I'm guessing you've heard of it, not lately? I wonder why that is.

The Tide Pod challenge is something of a ridiculous social media craze that arose last year. Children and some Adults (why?) took on the challenge of eating a tide pod, recorded themselves doing it and then shared the video online. #TidePodChallenge I’m asking why too, these people found themselves being sick on camera while live streaming, others were being rushed to the hospital and some came close to losing their life because they’d been duped into eating dangerous chemicals within the Tide Pod. As you can imagine bad press surrounded the brand as they tried, with very little success to get people to stop.

In this day and age, once something has become a social trend, no matter how weird or dangerous, it becomes very hard to control it. There is no reigning something in once it's gone viral so there would have been very little Tide could have done to stop this weird trend from escalating. So what did they decide to do? Give you something else to talk about, create their own piece of content that could go viral.

Flashforward to months after Super Bowl Sunday and when I say Tide now, do you think of the Tide Pod Challenge? Or David Harbour dressed all in a variety of clean outfits in ridiculous settings? I know what I remember. Tide has created a flawless commercial that pokes fun at its competitors in a fun and light way all while using the stereotypes to their advantage and creating an ad that will be hard to forget. When every advert you're watching has the potential to be a Tide Ad.

So before I go I’m going to leave you with one question.

Is every ad a Tide Ad?