The Great White Hope

Despite the proliferation of coin-operated laundries, nine out of ten U.S. housewives still do their wash at home. To brighten, if not lighten, their washday loads, they buy more than $1 billion a year worth of bleaches and bluing agents, starches and softeners, disinfectants and detergents. Now the home laundry market is churning with a new line of stain removers called enzyme pre-soaks. Competition in presoaks has locked two giant soapmakers--Procter & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive--in a classic marketing battle. It has elevated their rival products, P. & G.'s Biz and Colgate's Axion, to the status of household words.

The latest washday products are designed to supplement, not take the place of, ordinary detergents. Their enzymes are bacteria-produced catalysts that break down organic matter in much the same way that the stomach digests food. In laundering, enzymes decompose protein-based stains--chocolate, grass, blood--so that they can be washed away more easily later on.

To promote P. & G.'s Biz, the Chicago advertising agency of TathamLaird & Kudner has flooded TV with spot commercials showing Actor Eddie Albert using the product to remove stubborn berry stains. For Axion, Manhattan's William Esty agency has turned out TV spots starring Arthur Godfrey. He holds up a bloodied table napkin or a child's dress stained by chocolate ice cream and demonstrates how Axion helps clean them. Godfrey was hired, says Ward Hagan, a Colgate vice president, "because he's so sincere and believable."

Giveaway Game. Since antiquity, when the beautiful Princess Nausicaa in Homer's Odyssey laundered her linen by placing it in a stream and then dancing on it, women have sought improved ways of washing clothes. Honey, bran, sheep dung and even putrid urine have all been used as cleansing agents over the years. Enzymes were introduced as home-laundry presoaks during the early 1960s in Europe, where they have long been used for removing stains in hospitals and slaughterhouses. Unilever, the huge Dutch-British soapmaker, markets enzyme laundry products in 20 countries.

Until now, enzymes have been little used in the U.S. except by commercial dry cleaners. Soapmakers feared that American housewives would not have the patience to soak clothes for at least half an hour--and sometimes much longer--before washing them. Apparently the manufacturers were mistaken. The U.S. presoak battle began when P. &G. tested Biz in Syracuse in 1967 and found a surprisingly strong market. Biz and Colgate-Palmolive's Axion then competed in Omaha, the soap industry's other key test market. (Omaha, explains a Colgate official, "tells us what the rest of the world will be like.") Next, Colgate mailed free sample boxes of Axion to 50 million of the nation's 60 million households. Soon P. & G. also got into the giveaway game.

Tide's Out. Axion has jumped into a commanding lead largely by moving into more major cities before Biz. The total market now is $60 million a year and growing so fast that other companies are rushing to grab a share. Lever Brothers, the U.S. arm of Unilever, is test-marketing its enzyme presoak, called Amaze. In addition, detergents containing enzyme additives have been introduced by the three biggest soap companies--Gain and Tide XK by Procter & Gamble, Punch by Colgate and Drive by Lever Brothers. Regular Tide, which has been the No. 1 detergent since its introduction in 1947, has been replaced entirely by Tide XK. Eventually, the enzyme-spiked detergents may push almost all regular detergents off the supermarket shelves, even though the enzymes take so much time to soak out stains that they offer relatively modest improvement when added to quick-wash products.

The two major private testing services disagree on the effectiveness of presoaks. Consumer Reports concluded that Biz and Axion did little better than regular detergents in removing many stains, but Consumer Bulletin found that the new products "can surely help turn out a brighter, whiter wash." To sift the various claims, the housewife would need the advice of a chemist. In any case, the onslaught of enzymes, by adding still another step--and another product--to the laundry process, makes her washday chores both longer and costlier.

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