Play-Doh: Parenting is messy - Best B2C Campaign Winner - PrettyGreen - The Independent Agency Awards 2023

Campaign Summary:

Play-Doh is a bit messy (if you didn’t already know) and despite messy play having HUGE benefits for kids’ imagination and creativity, parents are still leaving the Play-Doh in the cupboard. Yep, Play-Doh has a consideration problem!

We knew we couldn’t change the product, but we could attempt to embrace the mess, not just of the product, but of life. Enter ‘Parenting is Messy’ – a light-hearted, multi-layered campaign which put an arm around ball-dropping parents to say mess is normal and, quite frankly, perfection is over-rated.

Parents are accosted daily by ‘bestselling’ books that implicitly tell parents that they are not good enough through relentless perfect parenting advice. In fact, our ‘state of the nation’ research into parenting pressures found that they feel overwhelmed by advice and the unattainable parenting goals presented to them.

So, we created Play-Doh’s version of the parenting book! Free to download, Play-Doh’s Notes on Messy Parenting was 32 pages of relatable, messy stories on parenting from 12 influential contributors, including Vogue Williams, Ian ‘H’ Watkins & Mother Pukka, who promoted the campaign to their followers. We encouraged parents to share their own stories on our campaign microsite and relieve their parenting pressure at Play-Doh’s guilt-free liberation event – The House of Messy Parenting!

Leaning into a negative is always a brave move by a brand, both from an audience & product perspective, but parents thanked us and embraced the mess!

The results speak for themselves: 1.2million parents reach with 21,000 positive engagements on social, 200 pieces of media coverage during the crucial pre-Christmas sales period, 100% of our event attendees said they would be “more likely to purchase Play-Doh in future” and Play-Doh’s share of voice versus competitors by 57% YoY.