TCL is one of the largest appliance manufacturers in the world, but in South Africa the brand is still best known for televisions. Home appliances is the growth category – and the way brands earn shelf space is through joint-marketing agreements with their retail partners. Co-fund the promotion, hit a specific price, move the SKU.
The brief was the creative for a joint-marketing push behind the P1108FLG 8kg Front Loader at R6999.
Challenge
Joint-marketing creative usually looks like a pack shot dropped onto a coupon. The retailer wants the price and SKU big. The brand wants the credentials and features in there. And nobody wants to design it properly because it is a two-week promo, not a hero campaign.
The result is the same tired white-background render most appliance ads default to. Fine for a catalogue. Wasted opportunity in a paid Instagram feed where the shopper’s next scroll is a competitor doing the same thing.
We wanted the campaign to earn its slot – lift the SKU into something that looked considered, and still hit the retail brief on price, feature icons, and model number.
The work
We anchored the visual on a single frozen-motion beat – laundry mid-flight, arcing out of the drum and into the basket. It reads instantly as a washing machine that works, before the shopper has read a single word.
Tagline – Smooth. Silent. Smart. Three attributes that sum up the direct-drive motor claim, all in one line and readable at feed-thumb scale.
Feature icon strip – Safety Lock, DD Motor, Steam Washing, Drum Clean. Retailer-required proof points, treated as a clean iconographic system rather than a compliance list.
Credential and offer stack – TCL Worldwide Olympic Partner logo lockup top-left, Inspire Greatness line top-right, model number and R6999 price locked to the bottom. Everything the joint-marketing agreement needs, without swamping the visual.
Formats delivered – Instagram Story (1080×1920), Facebook feed (1080×1350) with two variants for A/B testing, and a Demand Gen banner (1920×1080) for the retail partner’s paid-media placement.
The visual system was built so future SKUs – dryers, top loaders, other feature models – can plug straight in without a new creative round. Swap the product, swap the price, swap the icon strip. Same energy, same brand feel.
In collaboration with Sensesix
Made in partnership with Sensesix, who lead the TCL account and manage joint-marketing agreements with the retail partners. Sensesix owned the promotion strategy and the retailer relationship. Creature of Habit was the creative partner across the campaign concept, art direction, and rollout across Facebook, Instagram, and paid demand-gen banners.
If your joint-marketing creative is starting to feel like a coupon, that is not the deal. Talk to us about the SKU push that earns the scroll as well as the sale.
