HEAD & SHOULDERS | 100% Kosher Head & Shoulders | 2016
Hiding dandruff checks inside a Passover crumb hunt / HEAD & SHOULDERS "100% Kosher Head & Shoulders"
They bought up the entire domestic stock of Passover cleaning kits and slipped dandruff test strips inside. An ad that uses a religious ritual as its medium — you really don't see that every day.
The problem
In Israel, Head & Shoulders was already the biggest brand, but the challenge was finding further growth. It's said that half of all Israelis struggle with dandruff at some point in their lives, yet there's a tricky dilemma: people often don't notice it themselves, and others find it awkward to point out. The global solution had been handing out black test strips on paper, but it was judged that simply reusing that approach wouldn't work well in the Israeli market.
The insight
Passover comes with a traditional ritual: carefully searching the whole house for breadcrumbs and removing them. The idea was to piggyback dandruff — another kind of "invisible mess" — onto this household habit of hunting down and eliminating invisible mess. The plan was to let a household ritual, standing in for a higher authority, bring up a topic about dandruff that's even awkward to mention to friends.
The idea
They bought out the entire domestic stock of Passover cleaning kits (sets of candles, feathers, and dustpans) from the one and only supplier. Into those kits, they packed Head & Shoulders dandruff test strips, creating a setup where people would "discover" dandruff as a natural extension of searching for breadcrumbs. This was paired with printed materials and a hotline.
What happened
The campaign turned the national ritual of Passover itself into a distribution channel, and afterward Head & Shoulders' market share grew 35% compared to the same period the previous year. The campaign was entered in the Brand Experience and Activation category at Cannes Lions, where it won a Gold Lion.
Afterthought
Whoever managed to get the idea of using the "mechanics" of a religious observance as a medium approved at the proposal stage deserves real credit. Mixing a dandruff hunt into a breadcrumb hunt is right on the edge of sacrilegious, but it's so logical it's almost funny. I'd love to see more ideas like this — turning local customs into media.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Gold 2016
