Droga5 is debuting a new campaign for Air Wick entitled “Home is in the Air,” the agency’s first work for the brand since adding it to its client roster back in May.
In a long-form spot, Droga5 and Air Wick recreate the smells of home — a baseball glove, apple pie and a fireplace — for an American soldier stationed in Qatar. The video begins with the soldier, Kearen, and his wife, Cortney, explaining the hardships of spending so much time apart (at the time of filming, Kearen has been deployed for 11 months) and introducing the project. Air Wick experts then use an instrument called a solid phase microextraction device to capture, and later recreate, the scents that remind Kearen of being at home with his wife and six children. They then send a package of Air Wick candles imbued with the scents to Kearen, who says, “This, this smells like home.” He adds, emotionally, “It’s something so simple, but it means so much to me.”
“A very large portion of home fragrance consumers use fragrances not to cover up odors but much more to set the atmosphere in the home,” Tiffany McLaud, the marketing director of Air Wick, told The New York Times, describing the insight behind the brand’s new direction.
Air Wick isn’t alone in moving away from its traditional positioning as a product to mask unpleasant odors. Ogilvy’s recent campaign for Glade also highlights the emotions associated with smells.
The video, directed by Keith Ehrlich of Uber Content, debuted online today, introducing the campaign and the new “Home is in the Air” tagline. According to Tim Gordon, a creative director at Droga5, the video was crafted to bring that tagline to life. “It’s a very pure representation of what ‘Home is in the air’ is,” he told The New York Times. “Here, you’ve got the ability to capture the scents of someone’s home and then deliver it to him in a way that he can easily be reminded of home.”
Credits:
Mix Engineer: Rob McIver