🟨 Cif: How to Become the Official Sponsor of Swearing
Now, you can mint money with curse words...
Hey there!
Welcome to Yellow Chili Campaigns where I highlight cool stuff in marketing campaigns to help you get fresh ideas and actionable insights to sell more and grow your business.
Cif Miracle Clean is a multipurpose cleaner known for leaving virtually any hard surface sparkling clean with a fresh scent.
These days, a lot of entertainment includes swearing, but algorithms don’t always get the joke. Platforms like YouTube have strict rules and can take down ads or limit views just because a video has too many curse words. That means videos don’t get seen, podcasts stop making money, and creators can lose partnerships.
While many brands avoid explicit content, CIF saw an opportunity to do something creative, transforming censorship into sponsorship. In podcasts and shows, swearing usually gets covered with a beep. But CIF did something different. Now, instead of a beep, you will hear a fun "CIIIIIF" sound. It’s a smart way to remind people that CIF is great at cleaning, even dirty words!
Swear words were replaced by the CIF sound and not the usual censoring sounds. CIF helped keep shows with strong language clean enough to stay online and earn money, without getting blocked or restricted.
The campaign was launched in Brazil, and it debuted on Broxada Sinistra, a podcast known for its bold humour. The episode entertained audiences with hilarious stories from the hosts, who were even more unfiltered, only to have their jokes promptly "cleaned up" with CIIIIF. It also extended to other top 10 Brazilian podcasts, including Missão PodDelas, Inteligência Ltda, and Achismos by Maurício Meirelles.
Cif leveraged the growing influence of podcasts in Brazil as a key media platform to expand its reach, ensuring that even more people get to know and experience the brand.
The campaign also featured a digital activation where Cif cleaned up the language of Craque Neto, one of Brazilian TV's most notorious foul-mouthed personalities, during a YouTube live streaming of the sports show he hosts, Os Donos da Bola. In the content, Neto gave his unfiltered take on that week’s most high-profile football news (Brazil’s loss against Argentina and the 2025 Paulista Championship final).
ICYMI
Dirty Mouth is an example of a Content Marketing Campaign.
The campaign led to a 43% increase in the sales of Cif products and 15x more mentions than the brand average. Podcast episodes that were sponsored earned 52% more interactions than non sponsored episodes.
🍉 Action Points
Transform an industry problem into a brand opportunity - Content creators often get demonetized or blocked due to strong language. Most brands avoid this space altogether. CIF did the opposite. They jumped in, not only helping creators stay within platform guidelines, but also embedding their brand in the solution.
Make your message part of the punchline - CIF didn’t just sponsor content, they became the content. Every time someone swore, they heard “CIIIIIF,” reinforcing the idea that CIF is synonymous with cleaning, even cleaning up language. Find ways to naturally embed your brand in culture, instead of interrupting it.
Reinforce the product promise in an unexpected way - Even though this campaign lived in entertainment and digital media, it never lost sight of the product promise - Cif cleans. They just shifted the narrative from "cleans your counter" to "cleans your language", same idea, different and memorable execution.
You don’t need to change your product story, tell it through a fresh lens that gets people to pay attention.
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