Building global awareness to wipe out the sanitation crisis
Who Gives A Crap makes eco-friendly toilet paper and gives 50% of profits to help bring sanitation to the 2.4 billion people without a toilet. After 10 years of growth through word of mouth, it needed its first global brand campaign to support retail expansion in the U.K. and Australia.
With Alli, PMG refined the audience into "Uncrappers," people who want easy ways to do the right thing, and gave every market and partner the same audience definition. Broadcast, TikTok creators, podcasts, The Guardian, and out-of-home near stockists carried the brand's playful tone in both countries.
Awareness rose 9 points in the U.K. and 11 points in Australia, TV beat ratings targets by up to 74%, and the campaign won an Adweek Media Plan of the Year award.
Who Gives A Crap (WGAC) was founded to solve two main problems: Creating environmentally friendly products that meet the quality expectations of consumers, and making an impact on the 2.4 billion people worldwide who don't have access to a toilet, by contributing 50% of profits to create access to adequate water and sanitation facilities. In 2023, more than 10 years after it was founded, WGAC turned to PMG to grow its brand awareness globally to better achieve its audacious mission.
Building on WGAC's 'Uncrap The World' brand platform, our team's challenge was to use media to reach consumers in the U.K. and Australia, help them understand that even small decisions like choosing an eco-friendly toilet paper product can make a big impact, and motivate them to take action and contribute to a better world.
Cutting through the crap to connect with change-makers
Audience research identified progressive early adopters as the ideal target audience, and insights helped us refine that group into the 'Uncrappers', people who want easy wins that can help them do the right thing for the planet.
To pressure-test that refinement and make it operational across two very different markets, we turned to Alli, PMG's operating system. Alli Audience Planner built personas for the Uncrappers in the U.K. and Australia, capturing the sustainability behaviors, purchase triggers, and cultural cues that separated them from the broader progressive segment in each country. Those Audience Planner personas gave media, creative partners, and the WGAC brand team a shared definition of who we were talking to, so the three engagement pillars below could show up consistently no matter the market or channel.
Our engagement strategy thus was built on three pillars.
Get noticed: We'd need to 'cut through the crap' with high-impact, attention-grabbing media. Build meaning: Our audience needed to connect with the brand through relevant but playful environments. Sustain presence: Stay top of mind through frequency controls.
High-impact media meets playful storytelling
To get noticed, we selected key broadcast environments including Linear TV and BVOD, high impact OOH and DOOH formats, and local event activations (e.g., London Naked Bike Ride, Kite Festival) timed with key sustainability dates such as Ocean Day and World Refill Day to maximize awareness and SOV. We built meaning through partnerships with seven TikTok creators (including @AdrianBliss, @maddy_macrae_ and @_angelomarasigan), each developing content that ranged from hilarious skits to eye-opening facts to spotlight the power of small actions in making a massive global impact.
Our media strategy used host-read branded segments with influential podcasters such as The Guilty Feminist, Katherine Ryan, and Off Menu, among others; and 4-6 weeks-long activations across the full digital and print ecosystem of The Guardian, a hugely popular publisher with reach in the U.K. and Australia, to authentically express WGAC's compelling brand values.
We also extended the campaign's longevity in-market through TVC cutdowns running across YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, with paid social amplification of creator content and data-led OOH placements near select stores and retailers with WGAC toilet paper on their shelves, nudging consumers towards potential points of purchase.
The campaign ran creator, broadcast, publisher, podcast, OOH, and paid social across two markets, a global first for the brand. Strategy, media, and analytics teams used Ask Alli as a shared place to check audience signal and test creative and channel decisions. Every partner and market stayed on the same Uncrapper personas from Audience Planner, so the playful tone landed the same way on The Guardian, in a TikTok skit, or at a bus stop.
The 'Uncrap The World' campaign playfully represented a 'call to arms for bums' around the world, and it was a rousing success.
11 pts Brand awareness lift in Australia 74% Exceeded TV ratings target 609K Global engagement
We supported the brand's retail expansion in the U.K. and Australia by driving 9 and 11-point lifts in awareness, respectively, corresponding double-digit lifts in ad recall, and 3% lifts in each country for consideration.
From a media performance standpoint, our linear TV placements exceeded ratings targets by as much as 74%, and our team secured more than £500k in added value. Meanwhile, on YouTube, consumers reported 3% lift in consideration for WGAC products. And between the social creator content and paid social amplification, WGAC saw 54.2 million video views on TikTok alone, with over 609k engagements (and 12k new followers) across the United Kingdom and Australia.
Alli Brand Equity tied these movements in awareness, ad recall, and consideration back to media exposure and the Uncrapper personas built in Audience Planner, giving WGAC a clear read on which channels and moments moved the needle hardest and where to press next as retail expansion continues.
While WGAC grew through word of mouth, our team was able to help the brand evolve through its first-ever global brand campaign, and inspire change in consumers' attitudes and behaviors. The campaign also won an Adweek Media Plan of the Year Award as the Best International Campaign ($1MM or more).
"We wanted to bring some light and cheekiness to a heavy topic. Big change can start from something small as sitting on the loo."
Maria Chilewicz, Head of Brand Management, Who Gives A Crap, via The Drum
We wanted to bring some light and cheekiness to a heavy topic. Big change can start from something small as sitting on the loo.
