Tide confronts homelessness with free laundry room, docuseries on IMDb TV

Dive Brief:

Tide has teamed with human services organization The Midnight Mission to open its first permanent Tide Loads of Hope Laundry Room in downtown Los Angeles, in an effort to help people experiencing homelessness, per a blog post. Launched in 2005, Tide Loads of Hope provides laundry services for people affected by natural disasters.
Along with the laundry room, Tide is a presenting sponsor of "The Tent Mender," a three-part documentary series about people experiencing homelessness in LA's Skid Row neighborhood. The series is streaming exclusively on Amazon's IMDb TV service starting today (Aug. 6).
Tide's expansion of its Loads of Hope program is part of parent company Procter & Gamble's larger purpose-driven efforts, which the brand is looking to promote a docuseries on an ad-supported video-on-demand (AVOD) platform, rather than through a traditional ad campaign.

Dive Insight:

By expanding its purpose-driven program to Skid Row in an effort to help people experiencing homelessness, Tide can be more proactive than reactive with Loads of Hold as it looks to increase its humanitarian impact tenfold by 2030. P&G has committed to doing 2,021 acts of good for 2021 as part of its "Lead With Love" campaign.

The P&G brand launched Tide Loads of Hope in 2005 to help provide laundry services for people affected by Hurricane Katrina, and has since served over 90,000 families affected by natural disasters in the U.S. and Canada. In pivoting to help those affected by homelessness, Tide is focusing on a worsening crisis that has been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.

To highlight the issue, Tide is sponsoring a three-part series called "The Tent Mender." Billed as a documentary, the series uses the fictional, titular character to spotlight the homelessness epidemic in Skid Row. It was directed by Hand Made Productions founder Laura Hand, narrated by actor Peter Coyote and co-produced by studio The Story Lab and P&G Studios. The series is the latest content play for P&G, which has used documentaries and films to showcase its purpose-driven efforts in an attempt to better engage ad-fatigued consumers.

"We believe in the power of stories to shine the light on important issues facing our communities and inspire acts of good where our brands can make a meaningful difference," P&G Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard said in the blog post.

By streaming "The Tent Mender" on Amazon's IMDb TV, Tide can tap into increased interest in AVOD services that have seen greater adoption during the pandemic, as consumers seek out more — and free — streaming content. As part of the effort, consumers can donate essential items from their AmazonSmile Charity List to The Midnight Mission, make the nonprofit their AmazonSmile charity of choice or make a monetary donation to the Tide Loads of Hope Fund, expanding the reach of the purpose-driven effort.