Marketing
The most famous advertising slogan for Domestos in the UK is "Kills all known germs. Dead." An earlier advertising slogan had been "Domestos kills 99% of all household germs." During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Unilever ran a new TV campaign which featured a pastiche of the song Big Bad John, in which a Domestos bottle moved around a bathroom in the style of a cowboy. In the UK version of the campaign, the chorus was changed to Big Bad Dom[5] while in Germany, it was changed to Unser Dom[6] ("Our Dom").
In 2002, a short-lived campaign featured former Big Brother contestant Alex Sibley, who appeared in an advert lampooning his own obsession with cleanliness. It included an incident in the house, where Alex mimed to the song "That's the Way (I Like It)" by KC and the Sunshine Band. In the advert, Alex was seen cleaning the Big Brother toilet with Domestos whilst miming to the same song. Domestos was hoping the popularity of Big Brother would help sell their product.[7] However, by 2003, Domestos were in trouble and looking for other ways, to improve their marketing campaign.[8]
In 2005, various adverts for different Domestos brands were shown on television and cinemas, with computer generated germ-like creatures made to represent Salmonella, E. coli and Staphylococcus. Each germ asserted its plans to inflict suffering, sometimes in parody of well-known films such as The Godfather, before being wiped out by a specific brand of Domestos. The advertising slogans for this campaign were "Domestos – Millions of Germs Will Die" for Standard Domestos, and "Domestos – Millions More Germs Will Die" for 5× Longer Domestos. The ads were animated at Passion Pictures and had actors like Willem Dafoe and Christian Slater as the voice of the germs.[9][10][11]
The 5× Longer Domestos advert showed a germ cheerfully skipping and singing a song in a very deep American voice, reminiscent of narration in horror movie trailers.
Sung to the tune of "London Bridge Is Falling Down", the lyrics were:
The commercial ended with a voiceover of the slogan, read by famous British actor Patrick Stewart.[12] The staple of CGI germs has remained in Domestos adverts until 2018 and was replaced by "Unstoppable" in some countries.
