This Vomiting Washing Machine Hits Back at Plastic Packaging

smol is an independent laundry and cleaning brand with a big, noble purpose: to shake up the industry. As the pioneers of plastic-free laundry packaging, smol wanted to reignite the anti-plastic cause, by encouraging the switch to the UK’s first brand to offer laundry capsules in plastic-free packaging. 

In a shocking statistic, households across the UK get through over 110 million plastic laundry containers per year, which ends up in landfill or incinerated. To dramatise this fact, and working in partnership with Mother and Drool, smol’s new campaign focuses on an equally shocking visual: a vomiting washing machine, throwing up laundry plastic. The twisted metaphor aims to entertain people whilst drawing their attention to this often-ignored problem, offering them an easy way to make a change. The film was directed by Freddie Powell through Drool, and shot entirely in camera in the UK. 

Hillary Strong, CMO of smol said, “People are well aware of the need to reduce their plastic waste, but few dwell on laundry - one of those things that we all have to buy and use, and a huge generator of single-use plastic waste. At smol, we’re proud of pioneering the UK’s first plastic-free laundry capsule packaging - and know that if everyone in the UK switched to smol, we’d prevent 70 million plastic laundry packs going to landfill every year. 

“This campaign aims to introduce smol to an audience fatigued by anti-plastic messaging, with a humorous, attention-grabbing concept: A washing machine that vomits the plastic waste it’s likely to get through in its lifetime. Mirroring our audience who are quite literally sick of plastic.”

Oli Rimoldi, creative at Mother added, “Deploying a playful metaphor to dramatise the shocking amount of laundry plastic waste the UK goes through attempts to sidestep the inertia in this market. We’re hoping the ‘plastic vomiting washing machine’ will make people smile whilst drawing their attention to the plastic problem - offering them an easy, simple solution to make change with smol.”

Jen Smith of Craft Media said, “The media plan is designed to drive cut through and notice by leaning into smol's challenger brand personality, with balanced channels and a buying approach that signals quality and drives familiarity.”  The campaign will run for eight weeks on TV and BVOD, complemented with OOH media, underpinned by smol's digital performance media.

smol’s plastic-free packaging was a world first for the laundry category - it is fully recyclable and compostable, with a child-impeding mechanism to limit access by young children. The cardboard used is Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) approved which means it is made from responsibly managed forests. The packs are printed using vegetable-based inks.