When we first started working with Ronseal they had two jobs to do, reach a younger audience and take back ownership of their strapline. ‘Does Exactly What It Says On The Tin’ being so famous was amazing but that fame meant it had become an everyday phrase, disconnected from the brand. Ronseal Apology tackled both problem. Based around a simple observation, Ronseal products are now not just in tins, but tubs and tubes too. So the straight-talking brand with the strapline that was now a synonym for honesty wasn’t being as absolutely honest as they could be . That had to change, so we held up our hands and ditched the strapline.
Brand apologies were a big thing when we ran this work, the Tesco Horse Meat scandal was fresh, apologies to Tesco’s for bringing that up again. So full-page national press ads and public relation style films across social tapped into that, with our added bit of tongue-in-cheek humour. A tone that fitted straight-talking Ronseal perfectly. We also planted the story in the industry press pre-launch that we were taking the perhaps foolish step to change the line for some extra buzz.
After the initial launch we began to seed out some of the problems the new, longer straplines were causing, setting up the next stage of the campaign. The longer label packs didn’t even have time to hit stores before the problems hit. And the public agreed that changing the famous strapline wasn’t a particularly good idea.
A host of people on social were now saying we were crazy to drop the classic strapline and that we should switch back. So we apologised for our original apology, and hoped everyone would agree that while Ronseal is not always in a tin anymore you can forgive us that very slight lack of absolute honesty.
The campaign was deliberately designed to centre around ‘Does Exactly What It Says On The Tin’ reclaiming it for the brand. The media channels used and the use of humour set us up for the invention and innovation in the following years and started to target a new audience of young homeowners. Letting them know that if they need a product that just does exactly… there’s only one real choice.
You can see how we took the brand forward and continued to broaden the audience in the ‘10 years of Innovation’ case study.
