Categories: Articles

Great Advertising (From An Unexpected Brand)

Have you seen this ad?

When was the last time you paid attention to a commercial about toilet paper? Or even cared to?

Kimberly-Clark‘s Cottonelle brand (not a client) has come out with dispenser packaging for its Fresh Care Flushable Dry Wipes product. Yes, a moist and flushable toilet paper. Innovative product? Maybe. Stunning Cannes-worthy advertising? Nope. But it’s short. It’s to the point. It catches your attention. It makes you smile. But, more importantly, it makes you ask yourself a bigger question: why do we wipe the way that we do and doesn’t this make much more sense?

The butt of the joke.

In marketing, we tend to focus too much on the humor or shock tactics to drive attention. This simple (and effective) ad works on many levels: it clearly explains the product in a way that makes us smile and relate to it. It provokes us to think about our current habits. It creates a strong case for a consumer trial the next time we’re wandering down the toilet paper aisle. It doesn’t need to be flashy. It needs to be informative.

Too much time.

If I’m going to be honest, even blogging about this ad kills my point, because I’m giving this too much attention and time. Great advertising acts as an engine to transmit brand information. In a world of Facebook and Twitter many will argue that you need hashtags, content marketing and a bunch of followers to get people buzzing about this product. For my dollar, this makes much more sense: tell people about it, get them to smile, get them to recognize a new behavior, and get them to consider a trial.

That reminds me.

One of my current business partners used to have a sign on his wall. It read: "Be brilliant. Be brief. Be gone." It’s a lesson that advertisers, presenters, brands and more could learn from. Regardless of the product, production, casting or originality of the idea, by my estimates, Cottonelle nailed this execution. It’s also a reminder that not everything has to be jaw dropping… it just has to make the strategy and insight come to life in a way that captures the consumer’s very valuable attention.

Great advertising doesn’t always look like the way we typically define great advertising.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.