The subjects of the commercial were real people who were recruited on the street and led directly to a trailer for blindfolding. They were then taken to an apartment that a crew had spent hours stocking with foul-smelling objects treated with Febreze. (The couch prominently featured in the spot was found in a dump.) The responses of the subjects, as they examine their surroundings with their noses, were entirely spontaneous and unrehearsed, and recorded via hidden cameras from a remote site.

Gleie often employs real people in the ads he directs (notably in his acclaimed work for Pampers, Target and Hallmark), but the clever ruse incorporated into this spot gave it a novel twist.

The spot has been wildly successful, earning a huge number of hits on YouTube (and spawning several spoofs). Since the campaign broke, Febreze has become Procter & Gamble’s fastest growing brand.

Madheart is based in Los Angeles. For further information, call 213.995.4555 or visit http://www.madheart.com/. The company is represented on the West Coast by Lisa Gimenez Toliver (lisa@lisareps.com), Hot Betty in the Midwest (cat@hot-betty.com), and, on the East Coast, Dana Dubay (dana@dubay.tv) and Kelly Flint (kelly@strikemedia.tv).

Credits
Titles: Couch
Client: Procter & Gamble (Febreze)
Agency: Grey Worldwide. Ingo Klein, creative director; Eric Straub, creative director; Anja Seibert, producer.
Production: TwinFilm, Dusseldorf. Jan Gleie, director; Silvia Kirsch, producer.