The Homa Files

TakeAway:  Very little is off limits anymore when it comes to marketing. 

Making all marketers proud, the “adults wipes segment”  is getting more graphic and more descriptive.  YIPES.

I’m a proponent of good benefits advertisng, but this one makes me very, very queasy.

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Excerpted from NYTimes, “Adult Toilet Training, From Madison Ave.,” By Andrew Adam Newman, October 20, 2009

Toilet tissue advertising traditionally has featured fluffy clouds, cherubic toddlers and Mr. Whipple … But the ads remained steadfastly oblique about what consumers do after they tear along the perforated line.

With the prevalence these days of commercials for erectile dysfunction drugs and risqué network programming, however, tissue brands also are growing more frank … 

Cottonelle just launched a new commercial and a new Web site, CottonelleInstitute.com, to highlight not just the brand’s Aloe & E toilet paper but also its new flushable moist wipes … With both products, the brand is breaking with tradition, trumpeting not softness but rather that it is “dermatologically tested” for sensitive skin.

“Dry toilet paper is generally thought of as being a functional product, and a lot of brands in the category talk about strength and softness,” said a brand manager for Cottonelle wipes. “But we are reframing the Cottonelle brand as a personal care brand, which is a much more emotional space.”

… and the brand is pitching both rolls and wipes in one advertisement, in the hope of increasing the use of wipes, which are purchased by only 25 percent of households, many of which use them only on what she called “select usage occasions” … 

Getting adults to use more wipes in the bathroom … requires marketers to engage in a sort of toilet training with grown-ups, and Cottonelle and other brands apparently think cultural taboos have relaxed enough to do exactly that …

The wipes segment has been fast growing with only modest marketing support … and marketers say the growth of wipes does not cannibalize sales of toilet paper, because consumers tend to use them not as a replacement but an added step …

Charmin also is pitching its wipes … as complementary to rolls, and has launched a new campaign … that includes a video “product demo” …

“It’s a pretty straightforward way of speaking to consumers and letting them know how best to use the products together to get cleaner,” said a Charmin brand manager. “To my knowledge it is the most clearly that we have laid it out so far.”

Edit by TJS

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Full Article
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/business/media/20adco.html?ref=media

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This entry was posted on October 30, 2009 at 6:10 am and is filed under Mktg - Advertising, Mktg - Promotion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.