Howard Fretten

That’s another load off your mind

Detergent advertising has always been rife with cliché – its codes were the staple of early TV advertising, and when Mike Sands and I wrote this campaign at Saatchis the current trope was ‘Two Cs in a K’.

These ads were written against the line 'That's another load off your mind'and were designed to launch Ariel Liquitabs to a sceptical Britain.

In their own way, these three spots directed by Andy Pearson pushed the boundaries a little by using older people and ethnic minorities.  The gentle ‘real’ humour also struck a chord as Liquitabs became Ariel’s most successful launch ever.

'Learning' was actually pulled by P&G after a week as they had a gentlemen’s arrangement with Lever Bros not to use the same insight and Levers claimed they were about to launch in South America with a similar strategy.

Sure enough, a few months after we aired this film they produced something a bit similar. 

It was called 'Dirt is good ‘.

We got there first.