1001 cleans a big, big carpet for less than half a crown

I remember a particularly enthralling episode (no seriously - I was young and enthusiastic) from Advertising Practice that was a part of my business studies course at Bournemouth College. The lecturer sought to explain to us how one of the classic case studies of all time in the annals of British advertising practice was that of the Babycham brand.

The advertising and marketing plan was the brainchild of the inventor of the product who had discovered that he could market fizzy pear juice (or perry) and turn a good profit by selling it as an upmarket champagne-type drink for 'ladies'. He used all his trading profits to buy prime time TV space on ITV and he managed to get a cardboard cut-out of a sexy girl with a small pony (!) and a bottle of his product into the lounge bar of virtually every single pub in the country.

Such was the success of the campaign and so widespread was brand awareness that after five years or so of lavish media spend he stopped advertising altogether and really started to coin it in terms of net profits. He wrote off the cost of this advertising off over many years and reaped the benefit of the position it had established as the class drink for sophisticated female people!

I imagine females stopped asking for Babycham some years ago as it is definitely a product of the past - did it even survive into the 1980s I ask myself? I bet among ladies of a certain age though that brand awareness is still very high - they may not want one (even if they could still get hold of one) but they will definitely not have forgotten the drink. In a way it was the Barcardi Breezer of its time when there was nothing else on the market to compare.

Its the same with 1001 - the generation that grew up thinking Babycham was a great drink also grew up thinking that when it came to cleaning your carpet or rug there was only one name and that name was 1001. The slogan that accompanied the TV adverts was distinctive and memorable but must in the end have been a bit limiting on profits.

It did not matter that people had no other equipment when they set out to clean their carpet, if they had a bottle of 1001 then they could get the job done! The brand awareness of 1001 is incredible - among the group of lets say older people (i.e. 45 plus) who are regular users of carpet cleaning services then I estimate that 9 out of ten have either used the product or have a bottle under the sink.

I have proven this to myself on countless occasions by asking people - and its not as if the product is advertised today - you see it in big supermarkets but its definitely the Babycham of carpet cleaning - the product is very mature or should that be obsolescent? They actually have a huge range of 1001 products but most people just know the brand cleans carpets.

Professional carpet cleaners hate the product with a vengeance. I understand this and feel much the same but I am not sure this is a rational reaction. We (truckmounted operators) can deal with it fairly easily and in truth it is a minor inconvenience in our working day. The product tends to be over-applied and it foams like crazy when we try to extract it - to such an extent that sometimes one has to use a specialised defoamer in the recovery tank to fight the froth.

The experience I have had with this product is that it is invariably used without any reference to the instructions and often it is simply left on or in the dirt/stain/mark - delete where appropriate for your situation!

It is always rubbed into the dirt/stain/mark - an action which usually causes an abrasion of the carpet fibres - so a bad situation has just been made worse. Never rub a carpet - agitate a carpet gently with a clean, white terry towel or use a white paper towel. Terry towels carry water much better than paper towels so if you want to remove the hated 1001 then that is the best option - doing it this way is not a quick job.

Most of the dirt/stain/mark removal jobs we do have been worked on before we get to them but more often than not the DIY carpet cleaner gave up far to early. If you stick at it with white towels or better still you have a wet/dry vacuum then you can remove the hated substance and the tepid water you have applied (with a spray bottle) and hopefully the plain dirt or staining substance will be sucked up as well.

It is undeniable that some (usually but not always wool) carpets will stain when a spill gets into the individual fibres - this is probably the time to get a professional in to deal with the consequences. The key is knowing when a spill is in danger of becoming a stain. Commonsense will tell most people what the chances are of any particular stain becoming permanent.

This risk of a stain increases with the passage of time, allowing the stain to dry out, using googled remedies and half-hearted or heavy-handed treatments also increases this risk. When a stain has 'set' in the fibre due to one of these then with some staining material and some carpets NOTHING will shift it subsequently. You might be able to re-colour the carpet but getting the original stain out may be impossible.

In terms of the use of 1001 specifically though I have found that when it has been used on purely dirt marks (i.e. tracked in and/or greasy soil rather than potential staining materials) that it can act as a catalyst to gather the soil together - what happens next is err... nothing - because that is where the DIY person usually stops.

The soapy 1001 stays in the carpet along with the dirt and it is the application of the 1001 that makes the carpet look cleaner. The dirt may have been rounded up and pointed in the right direction but the final extraction part of the equation is often not achieved. The effect is that the so-called stain (but probably just soil) has been disguised in the form of a sticky residue that acts as a magnet for NEW dirt. Hence the oft heard complaint that "It looked better at first but now it looks dirty again!"

I have found on these occasions that when we come along with very high temperature cleaning solutions and industrial strength vacuum power we can rinse out the 1001 and the dirt and leave the carpets truly clean. In some cases it can actually make the job easier...


http://www.steamcleancarpetservice.co.uk/