In yet another spot to be used as a promo for future NBC Sunday Night broadcasts, Baltimore Ravens running back Mark Ingram plays a crazed herald, tapping on a man’s window from outside to repeatedly warn him “Sunday is coming,” so he can get laundry done in advance.
Tide has used a similar approach in prior years of incorporating on-air talent from Fox into ads for the Super Bowl and in-season broadcasts in 2018.
The current effort stems from a pretty simple insight, that NFL can also mean “Not For Laundry,” says Andrea Diquez, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, New York, and of Woven, which also incorporates creatives from sibling Leo Burnett, WPP’s Grey and other agencies. Powell Communications, Taylor and Marina Maher Communications are handling PR and sports communications.
Sunday night, besides being when NBC broadcasts NFL games, is actually the busiest laundry night in the U.S., says Amy Krehbiel, associate brand director for North American laundry at P&G. That helped germinate the idea.
NBC was happy to get involved and make talent available for the creative as “an opportunity for fans to see our top NBC stars paired with NFL athletes like never before,” says Mark Marshall, president of advertising sales and partnerships for NBCUniversal.
Tuesday wouldn’t be a bad laundry alternative for football fans, since it’s the one night not even lesser-conference NCAA games are on TV, and the NFL hasn’t had a regularly scheduled Tuesday game in nine years.
Of course, Tuesday would still put laundry on a collision course with other NBC programming. And, while it’s pretty easy to multitask laundry and NFL watching any time, by, um, utilizing the commercial breaks, no one involved wanted to suggest that.
“The idea is whatever night is laundry night, it’s got to be Tide,” Diquez says. “We want to put Tide into people’s homes every night of the week and be part of American culture.”