Tide launched Oxi Boost by interviewing the extras Marvel heroes keep staining

Laundry is a low-involvement category — only 26% of people were satisfied with their laundry process — so when Tide launched Oxi Boost, its most powerful stain fighter, it needed a demo big enough to prove 'handles any mess'. The obvious move was a Marvel tie-in with Thor or Captain America holding a detergent bottle.

Saatchi & Saatchi New York turned the camera around instead. Marvel battles leave enormous collateral damage, and someone has to wash those clothes. Tide was given access to all 36 MCU films and 10 TV series, identified every 'collateral stain victim' in the background of iconic scenes, then laboriously tracked down the real extras and cast them as the stars of the campaign.

The 'Collateral Stain Stories' ran from TikTok to TV to outdoor, plus a '5D' Captain America screening where moviegoers were stained as if inside the film and sent home with Oxi Boost to run their own demo. Within days Tide sold out at its biggest online retailer at five times expectations, logged over 417 million engagements and 1.6 billion earned impressions — the most shared campaign in Tide's history — and took a Bronze Pencil at The One Show 2026.

Superheroes' collateral damage is the world's toughest stain demo

Franchise partnerships usually rent a hero's face; renting the extras delivered the same universe at a fraction of the centrality cost.

The premise made the product the plot: every story was inherently about a stain only Oxi Boost could fix.

Real extras with genuine film credits made the gag verifiable and gave fans an Easter-egg hunt across 36 films.

The 5D screening turned the claim into a take-home demo, closing the loop from spectacle to trial.

In an IP partnership, the bystanders can be more useful than the stars: they carry the franchise's credibility while leaving the brand room to own the story and the demo.

Tide Oxi Boost became the fastest-growing digital launch in the brand's history, selling out at its largest online retailer within days. The campaign won a Bronze Pencil in Integrated/Omnichannel at The One Show 2026 and entered the Effie case library as an example of entertainment IP used for product demonstration rather than endorsement.