Cillit Bang was launched in Europe 2004 as a late entrant in a tough sector with established super brands like Mr. Muscle, Vanish or Frosch. Today it’s an established challenger brand in the household cleaning market with a continuosly rising market share and profit margins of over 25%.
So what did Bart Brecht, head of Reckitt-Benckiser (the company behind Cillit Bang) and his marketing department do right when they built this brand?
#1: The Name
"Who in the world would call this product by such a stupid name?" wrote one blogger. "It must be a joke. Imagine going into a supermarket and asking for Cillit Bang!"That might be right – but as an emerging challenger an outstanding weird name seems to be a great way to make you're remembered – especially when the top brands of your segment are known as „Mr. Muscle“ or "The General".
#2: The Target Group
Cillit Bang is a brand that was obviously created for a rising minority of cleaning product buyers: men. Thats why you will almost exclusively see men in all advertising efforts. And you won't see any countryhouse or super-clean family mansion but shared apartments and male single households - that's Cillit Bang’s brand world.You see: while the competitionen was still aiming at the traditional family models Cillit Bang found an uncontested, easy to focus and yet still huge group to target.
#3: The Proposition
The Cillit Bang brand colours might be pink and flashy (remember: there are still some established category rules that were learned by the consumers for years. This means you have to deal with them as a brand - somehow) – but the whole brand screams „MAXIMUM EFFECT! POWER! FUNCTIONALITY“. Cilit bang is the "Ultimate Cleaning Tool!"One could say the brand promise is somehow very 90ies-ish: Cillit Bang would not talk about sustainability or sea-breeze scents – but it’s so damn powerful that you could even imagine its formula is barely legal or in some kind of chemical grey zone.
From my own perspective I can tell you: this message is certainly reaching the target-group that has basically two requirement for cleaning products: They should help end the job quickly and ‚destroy’ even the biggest challenges - if it reminds me of of some kind of 'magical chemical reaction' ("Bang") even better.
#4: The TV-Spots
In UK the agency JWT created some great spots that first seem to be a bit dull – on the second view they are genius – especially thinking abut all the small details of execution - and have clearly done amazing work at establishing the brand.In a very postmodern way JWT sends the core-message („AMAZING POWER“) by exploiting dozens of category- and stereotypes like the fictional testimonial salesman Barry Scott, the artificial shelves packed with Cillit Bang Products in the background or the infamous product desmonstations.
In Germany Cillit Bang took a further step this year and created an even more post-modern way of presenting its product: integrating and re-modelling all clichès you could probably think of. Including two testimonials that could also be actors from a ‚Hangover’ movie and lines like „You recreated my bathroom, dude?!?!?!“
#5 The PR
2009 Cillit Bang gained even greater notoriety when it was revealed that its combination of sulfamic acid and phosphoric acid was so powerful a cleaning agent that it had been used to clean plutonium residue from a nuclear power station in UK.That’s not only the best „Reason to Believe“ you can think of – this is also the material memes are made of.
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