Paint For Change

Dulux faced a stagnant housing market and inertia about investing in our homes. Brand research showed that UK housing transactions correlate very closely with paint sales. Dulux’s competitors were price promoting aggressively leading to brand switching at point of purchase. Dulux needed to inspire people to get painting at home, steal market share and create talkability through engagement with consumers.

Dulux aimed to show people that small decorative jobs still offer big emotional payback/ This lead to the campaign ˜What Would You Change?” The first stage involved transforming the Akzo Nobel HQ in Slough, encouraging participation from the staff.

Dulux then worked with ITV to create a seeing-is-believing transformation to jumpstart the nation. It hijacked the three ad breaks during the final of ‘Dancing on Ice’ and created a media first of unique 60-second as-live spots showing a home makeover taking place from start to finish. In the style of “60 Minute Makeover” (a UK home improvement show), Claire Sweeney, Craig Phillips and a real family got stuck into the Dulux to transform their home in the time it took for Dancing on Ice to broadcast - just an hour.

Meanwhile, it worked with News International’s The Sun newspaper to go on a road trip with a Dulux/Sun double decker to ask people to nominate and vote for projects in their communities that were worthy of receiving a makeover. Dulux crews made over run-down local amenities such as scout huts, hospital radio stations and after school sports clubs. The two media giants synergised in a true partnership, with ITV turning up to film the community events and The Sun hosting all of the content on our bespoke microsite.

Search volumes on the Dulux website doubled that night and increased overall by 160%. There was a record level of red button interaction with the ITV content webvertorials with hints and tips on how to do it (averaging in excess of 10 minutes). Orders for colour samplers went up 175% that week.

Absolute ROI figures from econometric analysis are confidential but the activity paid for itself several times over as sales generated through comms rose by 40% YOY. In September alone, Dulux value share was up 42% vs Crown down 13% and own label down 32% (Gfk).