TracyLocke: Wisk-it

PARENTS ACROSS THE COUNTRY HAVE PREACHED and pleaded and begged their children again and again to be careful about what photos they post to their Facebook pages. Yeah, the kids know job recruiters can search for stuff like that and it can hurt their chances of landing a job.

But do they listen? Wisk laundry detergent, which has been helping people clean piles of dirty laundry for years, developed a Facebook application to help people scrub clean their online networks of any unsightly images.

The app, called Wisk-it and developed by TracyLocke, is designed to “wash away photos” like embarrassing pics from Spring Break, high-school yearbook photos, or those that are just plain dumb. Wisk-it can find tagged and untagged photos in friend’s albums, identify them to the friend, and then request the friend to “wash them away.”

Wisk was looking for fresh approaches to connect with new young customers, particularly college students and young professionals setting off in the world to accumulate baskets full of dirty laundry. But while the focus was on young consumers, the brand also bargained on pulling in its core consumer, a 25- to 55-year-old mom.

“Taking this stain-fighting message online was a natural way to amplify our message, a way to get the message across quickly and take Wisk to a very modern place,” says Elisa Gurevich, Wisk brand manager for Sun Products Corp., the maker of Wisk. “We wanted to get the message of stain fighting online and offline so it was really seamless.”

Wisk, made by Sun Products Corp., is well established after 50 years on store shelves and needed something unique and innovative to get these young people’s attention.

“We definitely wanted to talk to the young people because the app was directly relevant to them,” she says. “But it’s not just the college kid, it’s also the mom who has popped up on Facebook and wants to wash away that photo of the 80’s hairdo. It’s a relevant app for anyone.”

The idea for the app was sparked by media coverage of problems with humiliating photos on Facebook that can cause problems for young people and others.

“Everyone can relate to that,” says Ian Wishingrad, a copywriter at TracyLocke. “Everyone has a photo that has embarrassed them.”

The campaign ran last November and December, but the application is still live. Some 4,700 apps were downloaded, and one week after launch Wisk-it became the No. 7 fastest growing app on Facebook.

“We kicked off at the start of the holiday season — with all of its holiday parties and potentially embarrassing moments. So we were able to capture those people signing on to Facebook to view the photos, with Wisk-it giving them the ability to clean up their profiles by removing those embarrassing photos,” says Amanda Wormald, account supervisor at TracyLocke.

Public relations efforts played a huge role in publicizing Wisk-it. A Nov. 2 exclusive with The New York Times set off an explosion of media coverage on Twitter, online, on TV and in print — including four college newspapers and segments on ABC. Gurevich herself was interviewed about Wisk-it on NY1 as part of a segment about job recruiters searching Facebook and other social sites as a means of vetting job candidates. In total, the promotion received about 6.5 million media impressions. Weber Shandwick was the public relations agency for the promotion.

“The press release and the exclusive drove everything for us,” Gurevich says.

As for the budget? “Budgets were a fraction of what it would have cost through traditional marketing,” she says. “Our dollars were spent more efficiently online because of the way social media works — your message is pushed out by other people and that message spreads organically.

“We’re making a small noise right now, but over the next few months you’ll hear more from us,” Gurevich adds.

Wisk-it 2.0 is in the works. “Whether it’s a refresh of the application or leveraging the Wisk-it feeling to another space is still being decided,” Wormald says.

In July 2009, Sun Products Corp. named TracyLocke as its agency of record for shopper marketing. The company’s brands include Sun Laundry Detergent, Wisk Laundry Detergent, Snuggle Fabric Softeners and Cuddle Soft Fabric Softeners, as well as private-label products for national retailers.