Electrolux's marketing campaign designed with Gen Z in mind

Established in Sweden in 1919, Electrolux is a multinational home appliance manufacturer and undisputed leader in sustainability. With over 52,000 employees around the world, they’ve grown to consistently ship their products to customers all around the world. Their products have long been synonymous with quality, but it’s their focus on sustainability that they were looking to spread the news about.

Electrolux aims to eliminate carbon emissions completely, company-wide by 2050. They wanted to spread the word about their ambitious goal and turned to Valtech for help with a marketing campaign aimed at often overlooked audience.

With each new generation comes a sea change in marketing. Unavoidably, there’s a moment when companies recognize the increasing influence and buying power of the younger generation and realize they need to dial back on marketing to their parents and start marketing directly to those young people.

As Gen Z makes their loud entry to the forefront of global attention, companies are finally beginning to pay attention and start the work of marketing directly to them. However, in so doing, many companies have discovered just how different Gen Z is to the older generations that came before. With a strong focus on global and political issues that interest them, successful marketing to this generation requires a deep understanding of who they are, and an alignment with their values that brands have never needed with previous audiences. It became clear to us that creating a successful campaign would require more than just clever messaging, it needed a way to keep the audience engaged on both sides of the conversation.

Effective communication requires listening before responding. Therefore, the objective of this multi-faceted campaign was always to learn the values, views and visions of young people by giving them a seat at the table. It was important to show that a large corporation can indeed explore creative solutions with those whose opinions and preferences matter.

We started by publishing an open letter from the brand’s CEO, inviting young people to share their vision for future sustainable living with Electrolux. By inviting the audience to the conversation, we showed that this was a campaign that truly had their needs and interests at the center. And that was reflected beyond the initial letter from the CEO. From over 400 applications, Electrolux selected a team of eight young minds from across the world to participate in creative exploration sessions led by the Electrolux Innovation Hub. The team worked alongside internal and external experts, ideating, and exploring solutions for future sustainable garment care.

To drive greater impact, we also helped Electrolux collaborate with key voices of today, including young change-makers who are actively engaged in the world of sustainability. A comprehensive campaign was activated in 11 countries, along with PR outreach. The initiative made headlines on a global scale – most notably in Forbes, and we established strategic media partnerships with Vice and Monocle to creatively amplify the message among different audiences. 

Electrolux is already a well-known brand throughout Europe and the world. Their products and services need little to no introduction among most audiences. Their work in sustainability, particularly in a time when companies all over are seeking to highlight their work combatting climate change was the subject that needed to be shared. Given the natural overlap between Gen Z’s focus on having a livable planet and Electrolux’s ambitious carbon reduction goals, it was clear that this campaign needed a Gen Z audience to be successful.

As a result of centering the needs of today’s younger generation, our Better Living in 2030 campaign earned a reach of more than 300 million for each phase and the video we created was viewed more than 34 million times. The campaign performed well above target in all metrics.