FCB London’s Andrex “Get Comfortable” Campaign Wins the Nigel Jones Award for Excellence in Creative Strategy
The Nigel Jones Award for Excellence in Creative Strategy winner has been revealed! Congratulations to the team at FCB London for their work on Andrex’s “Get Comfortable,” a bold new campaign for the Kimberly-Clark brand that aims to address Britain’s self-imposed “social constipation.” This award, named in honor of Nigel Jones, who served as FCB Global Chief Strategy Officer for a decade, celebrates an FCB 456 creative idea that was built on a bedrock of excellent creative strategy.
The Andrex “Get Comfortable” campaign revolutionized public conversation a round bathroom habits, transforming toilet taboos into open, positive dialogue. Beyond delivering impressive business outcomes for the client, the campaign sparked a broader societal shift, encouraging healthier and more comfortable attitudes toward toileting habits among the Andrex audience.
We sat down with Ben Jaffé, Chief Strategy Officer at FCB London, following this win, to discuss the campaign strategy approach, what research revealed about worrisome toileting anxieties, challenges overcome in the process, and why collaboration is the key to strategic success.
Q&A with Ben Jaffé
Q: Congratulations on the win! Can you describe this winning strategy? How did you approach it and was there anything unique or different in your process?
A: “There’s a lot about the process that was unique in this case, but I believe part of the reason this strategy has received the recognition it has, aside from it being a great strategy, is a testament to the tools, processes, and thinking that Nigel Jones put in place.
When I first joined FCB, Nigel, alongside several other FCB leaders, released a set of tools, most notably Brand Bedrock, which was a way of helping brands achieve a powerful position that goes beyond the obvious elements of brand compasses, onions, footballs, temples, sausages, and whatever else different brands have.
There are three fundamental questions within Brand Bedrock: What is the essential enemy we’re fighting against? What is the fundamental belief behind the brand? And what is our behavioural mission? The combination of these answers gives a very clear sense of what the brand is trying to achieve — pushing against something while striving to influence behaviour in the audience that goes beyond simply getting them to buy the product or service.
We ran a Brand Bedrock session with Andrex, which turned out to be a real ‘light bulb moment’ for the client. We identified a powerful enemy, but perhaps more importantly, we zeroed in on the brand’s behavioural mission. Once we had a clear sense of direction, everything else started to fall into place very naturally.”
Q: What research or audience insights were key in developing your strategy?
A: “We conducted research that found alarming statistics about how ‘socially constipated’ we are in British culture, when it comes to our bodily functions.
In this research, we identified that there are a high number of people unwilling to go for a poo at work, or who are even uncomfortable just talking about poo.
There’s also a particular problem with bowel cancer in the UK, not because the UK doesn’t have a health service that can support people with bowel cancer, but because many are too embarrassed to go to the doctor when they have early signs or are simply not aware of the signs.
This research identified a clear behaviour that we wanted to address, and we felt we had a duty and a responsibility as the market leader to do it.”
Q: How did you ensure your strategy aligned with the client’s overall business goals?
A: “The client’s business goal was to maintain their market share and retain their position as the leading brand of toilet paper in the UK, especially with new entrants like private labels emerging. Andrex had to justify its price premium and couldn’t rely solely on their previous unique selling propositions.
We had a responsibility to do something above and beyond to provide a greater value to the Andrex audience — to be first movers in the market and to push the conversation forward. So, we had to take a bit of a punt. Initial research testing flagged some concerns that might cause many clients to want to dial back a strategy or creative. This could have been where everything fell apart. But, through FCB’s value of being ‘Brave Together,’ we gave the client the confidence to trust in the strategy and to forge ahead. We had built a strong enough relationship to collectively agree that this was the right strategic approach, and by showing the client the research on mental and physical health concerns related to the issue, they were able to see the powerful societal impact we could have.
When you have part ownership with the clients, I think as a unit, you feel brave enough to trust your instincts and to consider that maybe the research doesn’t give us the full picture to how people will respond to the creative.”
Q: How did you collaborate as a team to create such a successful strategy?
A: “When we’re working at our best, it’s not about staying within our specific roles or swim lanes. We work as project teams, where we have co-ownership of the strategy, co-ownership of the creative, and co-ownership of the production process. Everyone has a stake in the work, and it’s about ensuring that everyone feels they have skin in the game. We succeed together by being partners throughout the entire process and having collective ownership of the strategy.”
Q: What was a challenge you faced in strategy development and how did you overcome it?
A: “This campaign faced a unique challenge with how to approach the use of the iconic Andrex puppy, a powerful brand asset that’s hard to ignore. Historically, the image of the puppy was used as a metaphor for Andrex product quality. Puppies are often seen as soft, cute, and cuddly, which made them a way of masking the reality of the product they are associated with. The team spent a lot of time reading Carl Jung and delving into the relationship humans have with dogs, particularly how puppies evoke a caring instinct. Carl Jung’s work on archetypes inspired the idea of using the puppy not to simply convey the product’s qualities, but to trigger an emotional response in the audience, encouraging care.
Another key decision we made was to challenge the use of toilet humour. Traditional toilet humour tends to be associated with children, who often use it to cope with their own anxieties about bodily functions. We decided to flip this on its head. Instead of using humour to mask insecurities, we wanted to use it to
confront them. Both the humour and the puppy were tools to help people face their toileting anxieties directly, which was part of our broader mission for Andrex: to help people confront their toileting issues and adopt healthier habits.
This approach really ties back to Nigel’s logic in addressing problems, focusing on confronting issues rather than avoiding them. It was about helping people take ownership of their habits and insecurities, while using the emotional connection with puppies to guide them toward healthier and more confident toileting behaviours.”
Q: Can you describe the impact of the final work that resulted from this strategy?
A: “The results of this campaign were evident quickly, which is not always the case, even with an extremely compelling idea. In this case, however, the impact on sales was immediate. Within the first month, sales increased by £3.2 million, which was clearly linked to the campaign. Andrex also saw an additional £51 million YoY from 2023 to 2024.
Given that the UK is a smaller market with around 60 million people, this was a significant achievement. The campaign effectively reversed stagnation that had been ongoing for about a decade, adding an additional 600,000 households, which marked a major milestone for the brand.”
Q: What was the most rewarding part of working on this strategy?
A: “I think having the ability to really get under the skin of a big issue and thinking ‘this is actually a massive brand opportunity’ was all exciting.
I mean, we were able to break poo taboos. What’s not to like if you know that you've put work out in the world that has changed someone’s mentality or changed lives. And I genuinely think we will save lives in the process.
Even if you just make someone comfortable enough to do a big poo at work — that’s massive.”