• by Aaron Baar , April 21, 2016

Laundry pods — little water-soluble packets of detergent — are certainly convenient, but they can also be dangerous, particularly when it comes to small children attracted to bright colors. 

Using its Tide brand as the vehicle, Procter & Gamble is launching an advertising campaign aimed at parents of young children, encouraging them to properly use, store and monitor the brand’s Tide Pods. 

“Many people, especially families, love the convenience of Tide Pods, but with this comes the need to use and store laundry packets safely away from kids,” Rotha Brauntz, North American fabric care communications manager for P&G, tells Marketing Daily. “Keeping laundry packets up, closed, and safe – away from kids – remains essential to reducing accidents, and this is the focus of our new Tide advertising campaign.”

The effort includes a television commercial that depicts young children crawling and toddling in various rooms in the house. They get close to household items like hardware, pills and laundry pods as a voiceover notes: “It only takes a second for an everyday item to become dangerous.” The spot notes that laundry pods, in particular, should be kept away from children and ends with the mantra: “Keep them up. Keep them closed. Keep them safe.” 

In addition, the company has created an online video challenging viewers to identify 11 potential hazards in a typical living room within five seconds — the same amount of time it takes for a child to access a potential harmful item. 

“The campaign shows how accidents in the home can happen in a split second and encourages parents to keep laundry packets up, closed, and safe around young children,” Brauntz says. “Laundry packets and other everyday items can be dangerous if left around children and it only takes a second for an everyday item to become dangerous,” the representative says. 

In addition, the company has altered its Tide Pods packaging that includes a “Child-Guard” zipper to limit kids’ access to the product. The company will monitor incident data to gauge the campaign’s and packaging’s effectiveness, Brauntz says. While she wouldn’t disclose spending on the effort, she said it was comparable to the “levels that we use to support product launches” and will employ television and a heavy emphasis on digital channels such as blogs and social media, where parents of young children often look for advice. 

“We want to make parents of young children more aware of the need to keep them up, closed and safe,” Brauntz says. “Together with parents, we can help keep kids safe from accidents with laundry packets and other items in the home.”