The company has introduced a new television advertising campaign from 1 July featuring Droppy - an animated yellow soap drop wearing sunglasses. An NYtimes.com report claims that the campaign, by the New York office of Grey Worldwide, a unit of the Grey Global Group, is P&G's first TV advertising for Joy in five years.

P&G has done extremely limited advertising for Joy in the last five years, says the report. TNS Media Intelligence/CMR, which tracks advertising expenditures, says the company spent $366,000 on Joy in 1998. It did not advertise the brand at all in 2000 and 2001, and it spent $255,000 last year.

Ernesto Levy, Joy's brand manager for North America says that when P&G has promoted Joy recently, it chose to return to TV advertising now because television was the "ideal vehicle" to communicate Joy's "scent, shine, suds." "We want to leverage the great idea of the animated character that represents what Joy is," Levy was quoted as saying.

Created by Grey Latin America last year, Droppy was a huge success when P&G used it to pitch Dawn in Chile, Salvo in Mexico and Magistral in Argentina; Salvo and Magistral are similar to Dawn.

P&G decided to adapt Droppy for the United States market because research found Joy's actual and prospective users consider "dishwashing an escape," Elana Grasmann, a New York-based account executive at Grey was quoted as saying. "If we can make the experience better, it's important to them; the experiential benefit is a good place to be, as opposed to grease-cutting," Grasmann was quoted as saying.

Created in 15-second and 30-second versions, the new commercial shows a woman washing dishes in her kitchen. The animated character "drops in" and says: "Admit it, you just can't resist. Is it my suds, my shine or my long-lasting scent?" The spot ends with shots of Joy's four scents -- lemon, citrus, berry and green tea -- and the tagline, "Put a little Joy in your life."

The P&G officials have claimed that the commercial is far more playful than P&G's previous advertising for Joy, which stressed its grease-cutting capabilities.

Grasmann says the Droppy character used in the United States is "a little more modernised, a little more playful, a little more warm and endearing" than the Latin character. "He has suds and sunglasses for shine, and is transparent like the product," she says.

Joy assistant brand manager Aaron Eisel adds: is " The character is about enjoying the process when you do the dishes, about Joy's long-lasting scent, radiant shine and plentiful suds."

Eisel has been quoted as saying that amongst P&G's three dishwashing liquids, Joy is the mid-priced brand. He was also quoted as adding that P&G considers Dawn the "premium tier" and focuses on its grease-cutting capabilities and cleaning efficiency in advertising for it.

The report also states that P&G currently dominates the United States market for dishwashing liquid. It refers to the statistics on Information Resources Inc., a market research company, that states that Dawn, P&G's leading brand, generated close to 35 per cent of dollar sales of these detergents in the 52-week period ending 15 June. The report states that Colgate-Palmolive's Palmolive, with approximately 28 per cent of sales, is placed second; Joy has 11.2 percent of sales. P&G's Ivory brand was seventh, with 4.8 percent of sales.