CINCINNATI (March 25, 2021) – Today, The Drum announced winners of its Digital Advertising Awards recognizing the best technology and digital media in advertising. Empower is the proud recipient of The Drum’s Best Paid Social Media Campaign for its execution of American Standard’s #Flush2020. The celebration didn’t stop there, though; Empower and its in-house partner, Martin were shortlisted in the category of Most Effective Programmatic Partnership for their collaboration on ClearTrade.

2020 was a year for the toilet. For American Standard, that’s normally an exciting prospect. They’re big toilet people. But this wasn’t the year they—or anyone—had in mind.

Research showed 90% of homeowners were planning on continuing to upgrade their homes post-pandemic. Additionally, 25% plan to upgrade their master bathroom and 18% plan to upgrade another bathroom.

Consumers were ready for the calendar to change and the anticipation was expressed in a variety of phrases, such as “hurry up 2021,” “is 2020 over,” and “I’m over 2020” were mentioned in over 282,000 total posts on social media in 2020.

American Standard gave 2020 the sendoff it deserved and quite literally flushed it down the drain. The #Flush2020 campaign idea invited consumers all over to playfully revel in the most flushable moments and themes from 2020.

Given the volume of conversation and sentiment on social media about wanting 2020 to end, Empower recommended capitalizing on the environment in an authentic and relevant way by building a campaign that connected American Standard’s product and consumer conversation.

Empower created three unique custom-designed toilet paper rolls printed with some of the worst parts of 2020: murder hornets, COVID, being stuck on mute, and more. Then, they gave them away in a series of online sweepstakes throughout December while engaging consumers and influencers alike to pick their flushable moments.

Targeting Gen X and Millenial homeowners, success was measured by earned and paid impressions, social engagement metrics, and consumer contact information via entry forms.

Empower implemented paid media across Facebook and Twitter through interactive poll campaigns using creative assets corresponding with the sentiment of the campaign and encouraged users to vote for the thing they’d most like to “flush.” Creative consisted of 15+ videos, gifs, and static images.

The team used a combination of interest and look-alike targeting to engage with an audience matching the client’s ideal prospect but may not have engaged with the brand before.

Results showed American Standard’s net sentiment rose +81% during the campaign – the highest in 2020.

American Standard generated 667 total posts in December 2020 and January 2021 around Flush 2020, which drove a 23% month-over-month increase in organic conversation volume from November to December.

In December, 14% of all brand conversation surrounded the Flush 2020 campaign.

With only 450 rolls to give away, 30,000+ people entered #Flush2020 for a chance to win. Our paid social media campaign resulted in an astounding 76,000 poll responses and garnered an engagement rate significantly higher than even the strongest platform benchmarks. #Flush2020 achieved a 24% Engagement Rate on Facebook and a 17% Engagement Rate on Twitter. This is a $.03 Cost Per Engagement.