The coolest thing since soap on a rope: Welcome to the Internet Ivory

Soap is traditionally boring. Who really cares about soap? Soap isn’t really sexy, or interesting and to be perfectly honest soap is a household item that most people take for granted. Sure we’d notice if we didn’t have it, but most of us are lucky enough to have it so we don’t really give it much notice. Any soap is good soap and it’s one of those products that present a challenge to marketers. How do you create brand insistence with soap?

You join the masses online.

Ivory soap has been cleaning individuals all over the world since the late 1800’s. However they were starting to become boring. Companies like Old Spice have branched out their advertising, marketing their new body wash lines and for the most part Ivory has stood still. Since the product was launched it has carried a simplistic image with no strings attached. This works in the world of traditional media but with the amount of people online, your company has to be there or risk losing visibility.

Ivory answered the call by putting together a Facebook page to help interact with their consumers online. The company is not off to a bad start but there is room for improvement. Ivory is generating conversation with their consumers, and their consumers seem to care about the topics of conversation. The company has a segment that functions as a forum called “The Soap Dish”, where people who care about Ivory soap can talk about things that are important to them. One common topic of conversation revolves around children and the trials and tribulations of raising them. This of course appeals to their skewed female demographic. However, a very small portion of the conversation is centered around the company and the products it offers.

Having said that, the company is beginning to generate a following online and since the launch of the Facebook page on August 1^st of this year, the company has managed to gather 14,739 “likes”. Not too shabby considering the most interesting thing to happen to soap in the last 100 years is when it was offered on a rope. The challenge remains to drive conversation around their product using their other topics of conversations as a forum by which to get the conversation started.