Charmin Restrooms at Times Square

Charmin Restrooms
Tuesday night, whilst wandering the now sanitized-to-Disney-proportions streets of Times Square in New York City, I was accosted by a dancing toilet.
No, I was not doing anything illicit. There was an actual dancing toilet taking pictures with passersby and inviting me into a building to use one of Charmin’s remarkably clean restrooms opened just for the holidays in Times Square. I had seen the story of this attraction in “traditional” media coverage some weeks ago - they even hired ex-SNLer Molly Shannon to add her B-list star power to the clean potty project.
What I found was far more remarkable than the summary I had seen. The experience P&G has created educates about product differentiation, creates an emotional brand connection, and exposes the user to a host of ancillary brands (Puffs with Vicks to calm your nose, Bounty paper towels, Kohler toilets, etc.) It’s set up like a theme ride experience - you take escalators up and weave though a roped off lines and everyone you meet is wearing Charmin gear and SO CHEERY. They have both Extra Strong & Extra Soft paper in the stall and ask you to vote for your favorite when you get out. Then you can jump on one of a number dioramas with the Charmin bear and take your picture. You can even get on stage and do the Charmin dance with friends or sit down and take a load off by a fireplace. Click here for a YouTube video of the full experience.
Earlier this week, the New York Times mentioned the Charmin project in a roundup article about Times Square as a magnet for experimental marketing. P&G has gotten 2 major waves of lift from the Charmin restrooms. In addition to all the individual experiences they create for anyone going in person, they had over 100 traditional media stories pickup the project and now are seeing a second wave of social media. Because this is so remarkable and designed with so many photo ops, when you type “Charmin” into Flickr, you get more than 1200 uploads. That YouTube video I linked to above has been seen more than 1300 times! Not bad at all for toilet paper...
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