P&G’s iconic soap brand Ivory changes its package design launching a a new marketing campaign. Ivory’s signature white soap packages will be replaced with colorful ones but the soap stays the same, though with a revamped logo.

Photo: P&G

With the remake and the new campaign, P&G tries to refresh the 132-year-old Ivory brand. For the last time, P&G has focused on its bigger brands, and the white bar of soap has lagged behind its rival Dove and faced increasing competition from the likes of Dial and Irish Spring, says the Washington Post.

Ivory was the first brand that P&G brought to the mass market and it has become the namesake of a P&G research and production center called ‘Ivorydale.’ It’s entered the American pop culture as a sponsor of early television soap operas and the first televised major league baseball game. New marketing employees at P&G even use it as a part of training, learning about how Ivory reached consumers before mass media with free samples, children’s coloring books and recipe booklets.

To remake the brand’s look and boost sales, P&G turned to Wieden+Kennedy, the agency that was behind one of advertising’s biggest hits of the last two years—the Old Spice Guy series as well as Fabio series which breathed a new life into the brand’s body washes and deodorants.

Being “the cheapest soap for everybody and every want,” Ivory doesn’t change its price and quality that stays the same since 1882. But it changes its package to more colorful and there is a big ‘10’ on the new package emphasizing the 10 bars compared to 8- and 6-packs sold by most competitors. A simpler logo resembles the previous of the 1950s and carries the slogan, ‘pure, clean & simple.’ The ads are also simple and humorous. Five TV commercials will begin air in many cities soon.

“We don’t want to do something that feels trendy or out of character for the brand,” said Danielle Flagg, a Wieden+Kennedy creative director. “This iconic brand has a timeless feel, so we’re just putting it with a new backdrop in the modern landscape.”