Marketing Inspiration

Potty All Night Long

If you travel to Europe or Asia, you're bound to encounter self-cleaning toilet seats in public restrooms. They work in a couple ways: either a mechanized arm reaches out and sanitizes the seat, or the seat rotates beneath a cleaning element that extends from the rear of the toilet. They're fun to watch, and reassuringly hygienic, but how on earth do you market such a product?

"Most marketing managers would talk about their 'flexible, scalable solutions for toilet-cleaning processes using cutting-edge technology' or some such gobbledygook," writes David Meerman Scott at his Web Ink Now blog. Instead, he notes, manufacturer CWS decided to show everyone exactly how its toilet seat works.

You might be thinking this isn't such a great idea—perhaps you should just take their word that it works well—but go ahead and click on the link. At the beginning of the minute-long ad, you'll see a beautiful blonde model navigate through the chic, all-white bathroom of a high-end nightclub into a spacious stall. She shuts the door behind her, kneels beside the toilet and—wait for it—draws a packet of cocaine from her bra. After emptying the contents onto the toilet seat, she rummages through her purse for a bank note with which to snort the lines she cut. But then, suddenly, the seat starts to rotate, cleaning itself, and ... we'll let you watch how it ends.

By playing with a naughty, yet not stomach-turning, use of public restrooms, CWS demonstrates its product in an amusing way that has now reached a million views on YouTube. And that's Marketing Inspiration.