New Kleenex ad focuses on back to school anxiety.
If you tried to tell me you weren’t anxious about starting at a new school, I wouldn’t believe you. Everyone can relate to being nervous about making new friends or finding your way around a new school. Kleenex taps into that emotion brilliantly in their new commercial.
This isn’t marketing fluffery. The brand partnered with the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence to hold an emotional workshop, where kids shared their feelings about starting middle school. The attendees were asked to give out care packets, or small Kleenex packs, with positives messages written on them to fellow students to help cope with their feelings.
Anytime you can get kids to open up and talk about their feelings should be considered a success. I think that recognizing this is super smart for the brand, and the results back me up. According to the tissue company, after sharing about their feelings, 64 percent of students reported feeling more confident. 59 percent felt less alone. And 57 percent felt less worried.
We want kids to know that it’s okay to be nervous, and that everyone is sometimes. I think opening up that conversation to kids and parents is a helpful reminder to talk about your feelings, and use a Kleenex if you need to. Of course any tissue will do, but why not use the tissue that’s tackling the issue?
Kleenex also created a graphic to aide parents in discussing these topics with their children at home. I love seeing brands try to do some good in the world, I thought this one was a real tear jerker. Quick – someone pass me a Kleenex!
