East Pleasant Launches Massive P&G Campaign

East Pleasant Director Damien Drake has wrapped up a mammoth global campaign for P&G. The Everyday Effect, as the campaign is known, demonstrates P&G’s massive portfolio of marquee brands – Swiffer, Tide, Dawn, Olay, Pantene, Gillette, Oral B, Ariel and more – at work in more than 30 homes across the globe, making users’ lives simpler and more enjoyable.

A Swiffer spot – produced in partnership with Yahoo! and Publicis Kaplan Thaler, and set in the Long Island home of 90-year-old married couple Lee and Morty Kaufman – typifies the campaign. Weary after raising six kids and without around-the-house help from her husband, Lee is less enthusiastic than ever about lugging a mop and bucket around and scaling a rickety chair to dust the home’s upper reaches. When an anonymous P&G donor drops a crate of Swiffer adjustable dusters and waterless mops on her porch, Lee is thrilled with the time she saves and the extra energy she has as a result.

Similar spots show how a crate of Always pads changes life for teenage girls at a school in a remote South African village or how a package of Charmin toilet paper improves long journeys to sea for a father-son shrimp boat team in Louisiana. Other spots venture into homes in several US states and Germany, Italy, the UK, Mexico, Greece and Canada, underscoring the global resonance and universal appeal of P&G’s products.

Rather than rely upon actors, P&G wanted to showcase their products improving the lives of real people facing real day-to-day obstacles. To maintain that sense of authenticity, Drake entered each home with only a very basic plan, building close relationships with each family and letting the story unfold organically.

“With any project, I try to forge relationships that transcend a simple working partnership, so that viewers can get a better look at who these people really are,” Drake recalls. “We had such a wonderful time shooting with Morty and Lee – the New York couple that stars in the Swiffer spots – that Lee was on the verge of tears when we left. That moment was incredibly touching, and that sense of intimacy created a really effective context to show how P&G’s products made people’s lives easier, more efficient, and better overall.”

This human element contributed to the campaign’s breadth and longevity. The first spots in the “Everyday Effect” campaign were multi-brand efforts that emerged from a partnership with Grey and Drake in May 2012. P&G eventually brought on Yahoo! to take over the campaign, but was so pleased with the original work that they encouraged Yahoo! Head Of Entertainment & Lifestyles Neal Weiss and Supervising Producer Priya Balachandran to reenlist Drake for the ensuing 22 spots. The global success of this campaign also led P&G to retain Drake on recent work for their recent Earth Day campaign.

The Everyday Effect spots are running on a combination of broadcast and online outlets across the globe.

Downloads:

Credits:

Client: Procter & Gamble
Product: Swiffer

Agency: Publicis Kaplan Thaler (PKT)
Producer: Sharon Petro

Production Company: East Pleasant
Director: Damien Drake
Executive Producer: Michelle Cuccuini Hicks
Supervising Producer: Emily Plunkett Fleischer

About East Pleasant:

East Pleasant, an Emmy Award-winning production company founded in 2004, is a group of creative individuals layered in years of expertise on both the agency and production sides of the advertising industry. The studio is a highly flexible entity, able to handle traditional or nontraditional TV commercials, films, web projects, episodic TV, music videos and documentaries of any scope, perfectly tailored to its clients’ needs.

Company principals – which include EP Michelle Cuccuini Hicks and Directors/Founders Damien Drake, Stash Slionski, Xander Strohm, and David Weinstein – oversee a diverse, globetrotting team of producers, directors and editors who focus on shooting beautiful imagery that tells relevant stories. This group has produced work for some of the most recognizable brands in the world – Nissan, Nokia, Nike, Kenmore, Clinique – while teaming with top agencies Grey, W+K, Ogilvy, KPS+P, Anomaly and Publicis, to name a few.