Even toilet-paper gets its kicks in fashion. This year, Cottonelle created a highly unique offshoot beauty lounge to spruce up New York Fashion Week and change up typically showcased brands. Both creative and memorable, the toilet-paper brand’s hosted lounge created a variety of excitement-packed options for event-goers.
Pampering in Style
The toilet-paper market is tough to market. It isn’t, however, exclusive to typical comfort commercials. Cottonelle’s approach, harnessing the triumvirate of promotional power—gifts, celebs and media—took Fashion Week by storm with a rather ornamental element.
Attendees were pampered, offered photo ops, gifted with Cottonelle gift bags and were given meetings with industry influencers. Taking place at SoHo’s Openhouse, Cottonelle’s beauty lounge created, yes, an entire wall out of toilet paper rolls. The rolls, designed and placed along the wall, created a photo booth backdrop to encourage hygiene-related poses.
The Method and the Meaning
Cottonelle’s toilet paper wall was created to boost its CleanRipple Texture toilet-paper—which is one of the brand’s own innovations. Designed to clean better, CleanRipple Texture toilet-paper definitely benefits from an “all hygiene, no nonsense” marketing effort.
Cottonelle’s approach worked, too. Senior associate brand manager, Jeremy DeWitt, considered the event to be a major success, setting Cottonelle apart from typically flat patterns, uninspired visitation booths and, of course, the brand’s leading competitors. The toilet-paper industry, itself, is difficult to compete in due to the product’s marketing monopoly on television time. That said, experiential approaches certainly exist—and Cottonelle has hit it right on the head.
More than a Showcase
Cottonelle’s display, in essence, was a consumer visual test for CleanRipple’s design. The product’s showcase, being out front and center, was a compelling feature reveal. While a highly forward approach to display marketing, the massive toilet-paper wall wasn’t necessarily off-putting. Here, the brand’s dedication to its beauty lounge takes the main stage. Its attention to consumer interaction—and not only detail—won its visitor population’s heart.
The Sponsors and Affiliates
Few experiential marketing efforts, today, are solo efforts. Cottonelle utilized its big-industry brand partners to breathe life into the event, backing a truly unique idea with truly resourceful entities. Corso Coffee, Pulsaderm, YouCam Makeup and Nonni’s Foods, all sponsors and partners, directly assisted the beauty lounge’s creation.
Integrating sponsors into experiential approaches can be difficult, but Cottonelle’s resounding support reveals quite a lot about its strategy. Primarily, it works. Secondarily, it displays an overarching inclination to try new things. Few marketing creators have the intensity, the openness and the creativity to display toilet paper on a wall, but Cottonelle’s display proves such a venture is, indeed, a successful one. The event’s success is likely attributed to its initially bizarre ideation, right alongside its solid approach to practical marketing.
