Housework used to be a mundane weekend task with a boring choice of fluids and sprays to get the job done. But with how-to videos regularly going viral, cleaning brands are reinventing themselves for the social media age with fashionable colours, sound-effects and tips from “toilet cleaner” influencers.
Given the drudgery associated with chores, that watching videos of other people doing them counts as entertainment takes many by surprise. But over the past three years TikTok cleaning videos have amassed 6.4bn views in the UK alone, with #CleanTok, the area of the platform devoted to scrubbing toilets and kitchen floors, a bigger draw than makeovers on #BeautyTok.
Peter ter Kulve, who runs the large home care business of consumer goods company Unilever, says TikTok has turned a once predictable market upside down. The company shifts more than £10bn of cleaning products a year globally, with Domestos and Cif among its biggest brands, but Ter Kulve says it is no longer just in the “stains and hygiene” business as social media had turned consumer attention to the “joy and Zen” of cleaning.
With that in mind the company is working on products that “are sensorily more interesting”. “Even in cleaning, it is all about the experience,” says Ter Kulve. “We are thinking more about the hedonics of our products, more fragrance, more excitement in the application. We need to fun up the whole cleaning experience.”
This desire to inject pizzazz means the once staid household aisle in the supermarket has become a hotbed of innovation. Toilet cleaner, for example, now comes not just as a strong-smelling blue liquid but also in an exciting selection of colours, including pink (for Barbie fans), as well as in the forms of gels, foams and fizzing tablets.
Ter Kulve gives the example of its work on Domestos, which it has been selling for the past century. “It’s a thick bleach, it drips slowly through your toilet bowl, a bleach is bleach,” he says of the old world. Now, though, it also comes in a “power foam” that makes a “satisfying swoosh sound” when you spray it under the rim.
TikTok exposure can have a big impact on sales in a UK market worth nearly £5bn a year – whether it’s a new gadget like the soap-dispensing dish brushes that are in vogue, or an old favourite like Cif scouring cream. Sales of the latter are “exploding” after TikTok highlighted its cleaning power on scuffed trainers.
Lynsey Crombie, the TV cleaning expert and influencer known as the “Queen of Clean”, says cleaning hacks and tips are popular because many people just don’t know how to do it. “A lot of basic skills have gone out the window because life is so busy, so they look for someone online to guide them and to educate them,” she says.
To capitalise on social media’s love of cleaning Unilever recently struck a deal with TikTok to work with more than 100 influencers, with their input used to shape new products. This turn of events is a surprise even to Ter Kulve: “Five years ago we would not have been talking about influencers, maybe for certain beauty products, but influencers for toilet cleaners are you mad?”
