ADdicted: Tide Cold Callers

If you want to literally laugh out loud today, click the link below to watch these five 30-second commercials from Tide.

(The YouTube link is a compilation of five ads in the campaign; trust me, take the 2.5 minutes to watch them all...)

Ice-T and "Stone Cold" Steve Austin do a hilarious job as Tide Cold Call Center workers, and the other celebrities who answer their calls do so in a way befitting of their trademark characters. My favourite is the duo's exchange with Schitt's Creek star Annie Murphy, who's clearly in-character as Alexis Rose for the spot despite answering the phone as "Annie". ("For the environment" is absolutely something Alexis would say in that context, right??)

The creative idea of the Tide "Cold Callers" is very funny, and the campaign's use of well-known celebrities is certain to generate some earned media for the detergent brand as we all share these spots with our family and friends. (You're welcome!)

But let's take a moment to appreciate what Tide managed to achieve here.

Many advertisers hire celebrities for their campaigns and try to use humour to get you to remember their ads.

But very few use celebrity characters this effectively. And even fewer find a way to have the humour in the ad amplify the key message rather than overshadow it.