Having a good marketing strategy is vital for any business, as this is the key to a good communication with the customers. A strong strategy can transform a simple ad into a real advertising campaign phenomenon. Such was the case with Compare the Market insurance website which launched the Compare the Meerkat campaign and became one of the most successful long-running ads in UK.

Since most people are influenced by commercials on a daily basis, brands need to deliver brave and catchy adverts – especially if they want to get the ‘Greatest Viral Ad in Internet History’. That is exactly the case of a niche product that helps customers to have a good bowel movement: Squatty Potty — a family owned company founded in 2011 in Saint George, Utah — is a brand which sells toilet stools that have “redefined our ideas about healthy toilet posture.” Seeking for a simple solution to help people get the correct posture while using the toilet, Squatty Potty launched a series of toilet stools that have the power to “change the way we poop, one ‘stool’ at a time.”

Some may say, that promoting a product related to the way people ‘do their business’, is a difficult task, but not for Bobby Edwards, the Squatty Potty’s CEO, and pioneers of the combination of two disparate worlds: brand advertising and infomercials — the Harmon Brothers — who figured the perfect way to talk about colon health and correct toilet posture. This strong collaboration helped the toilet stool products company launch a campaign and ‘hire’ a unicorn to show the world how a simple plastic stool can transform a basic daily activity into a relaxing one. In fact, this successful campaign is a surprising theme for this week’s #ThrowBrandThursay.

Because it is not easy to talk about what happens in the bathroom, the company that believes in “good bowel movements, clean bottoms & sweet-smelling loos,” together with the ad agency, whose ads drove over $100 million of revenue in 2016, launched a video in 2015 named “This Unicorn Changed the Way I Poop,” showing the effects of improper toilet posture. The commercial picked more than 66 million views and 1 million Facebook shares in just 4 months since its release. Also, the stool has been featured on TV shows like Shark Tank and Dr OZ.

The hilarious 3-minute video features a unicorn pooping out ice cream with the help of the Squatty Potty stool, whilst his knight friend describes the whole process. Even though it is difficult to approach this subject, the mythical creature succeeded in boosting the company’s sales and establishing a 400% increase in retail sales. The campaign went viral, made a real impact on the business and was a total social win.

Short after the launching of the official video, an auto-tuned remix video called “The best poop of your life” appeared. Edwards, CEO of the US brand that sells these ‘magic’ toilet stools, said this one was “even weirder than the original one.”

The story of the magical unicorn that poops rainbow ice-cream doesn’t stop here: in 2016, Squatty Potty presented its new product with another cheerful ad. Apparently, the promoted toilet spray is ‘made of’ golden rainbow farts of the same mystical unicorn that boosted the company’s sales by almost 600% in 2015.

The effectiveness of the new bathroom odor is described via a 4-minute-long video — also the work of Harmon Brothers — and uses the same characters as the first short-film: the unicorn, which now farts rainbows in a bottle, and the charming knight that describes the process of transforming the farting rainbows into the efficient toilet sprays. Sounds just like your regular brand commercial, right?

Before working for the Squatty Potty campaign, the Harmon Brothers created a brilliant online commercial for the fragrance company Poo-Pourri, named “Girls Don’t Poop.” The 2-minute-long video was released in 2013 and gathered 1,5 million views on YouTube in the first three days. Although the Poo-Pourri commercial managed to help sold out the firm’s inventory and created backorders for weeks, the ‘number two’ commercial created by Harmons for its competitors received bigger praise, since the 2015 ad “This Unicorn Changed the Way I Poop” was indeed named” by Boing Boing.

The campaign has also evident health benefits. Scientist have pointed out that a squatting position is better during elimination because it can lower the chances of developing a series of conditions like bloating, straining, hemorrhoids and constipation. Therefore the Squatty Potty stool — used to bring the knees up in an optimal position, making this process a lot easier – is important to combat this kind of health issues.

Credits:

Client: Squatty Potty / Unicorn Gold

Agency: Harmon Brothers