‘We needed to find a new way to maintain category leadership’: Koh launches first-ever TVC
Eco-friendly cleaning brand Koh has launched its first-ever nationwide TV campaign in its eight-year history. Speaking to Mumbrella, CEO Chari Walters and head of brand Siobhan O’Brien explained why they’re now making the shift to traditional advertising channels.
Since its inception in 2016, Koh has used performance marketing and UGC-led content to tell its brand’s story and mission, gaining over one million loyal customers.
However, now making a giant shift, the brand is aiming to become more disruptive within the cleaning category, with the consumer and planet front of mind.
“Koh has always done the performance style marketing, and it’s always been so successful, but we feel we have overly penetrated that market and that it was time to diversify into new channels,” Walters told Mumbrella.
“The benefit of performance marketing has lost its edge over the past couple of years, and the eco-cleaning category has become much more competitive, so we needed to find a new way to maintain category leadership, and to stand out.”
O’Brien told Mumbrella the aim of the new spot is to build the brand as a whole – as more than just a product.
“We’ve always been very much a product-led business,” she explained. “And we’ve got an amazing, differentiated product, and the marketing we’ve been doing so far has served us really well, but we’re wanting to build our brand as a whole, more.
“And obviously the best way to do that on mass and at scale is through traditional channels.”
The new campaign, made in collaboration with Ouzo Studio, uses a tongue-in-cheek approach to push Aussie couples to start sharing cleaning duties, and stop making excuses.
It aims to go against the mass consumption strategy of other industry players, and help the brand stand out in the increasingly competitive environment.
With the tagline ‘Choreplay Is The New Foreplay’, the spot stemmed from insights that 113% more cleaning at home is done by women, and a Harvard Business School study that found one in four divorces have cleaning as the sole cause.
“It’s a problem everyone knows about,” O’Brien continued. “Everyone has that one thing that their partner, housemate, coworker, whatever the relationship is, does, that really bothers them.
“So it’s this idea that you don’t need to make big the big, romantic gestures in a relationship, but instead, just pick up the mop and clean the house.”
Koh CEO, Charli Walters, and head of brand, SIobhan O’Brien
Walters acknowledged that the cleaning category isn’t typically one to share “cheeky” and “sexy” messages.
“The typical cleaning ad is a mum mopping the floor with kids around – she’s protecting the children, protecting the family. It’s not something that is easy to market as something fun and cheeky.
“So this has been a really tactical approach from us, to make sure we do stand out and cut through the competitive category. We’re poking fun at a universal truth, one that everyone can connect to, in a fun and clever way,” she said.
The campaign is rolling out across TV, BVOD, YouTube and OOH.
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Lauren McNamara is a journalist at Mumbrella, covering the creative and PR beat. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS.
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