Description: A toilet attachment
Main Pitch: "Turn your ordinary toilet into a luxury bidet in just minutes"
Main Offer: $29.99 for one
Bonus: 2nd one (just pay a separate fee)
Marketer: Telebrands
Watch the spot
My hypothesis that "s**t solutions don't sell" started as a joke, but it ends up being pretty accurate. Whether it's pooper scoopers, plungers or toilet-bowl cleaners, products from this "category" never seem to work on DRTV. For that reason, I strongly doubt a poor man's bidet is going to work. There's also a cultural issue here. If the bidet concept was going to catch on in America, it would have happened a long time ago. Contrary to an argument central to this pitch, you don't have to be affluent to own a bidet.
As for the creative, it poses an interesting dilemma. You really can't show much when pitching a butt washer. At least, my creativity fails when trying to think of a tasteful demo or (worse yet) magic demo. This creative team chose to use a blue substance as a stand-in for the brown substance in question. The end result is still gross, and I think that's the main reason why my hypothesis has held: It's hard to turn a gross-out into a sale.
S7 Analysis: Going to back to the failure of the bidet concept to catch on in this country, it seems clear this type of product is incorrectly targeted. The needed question is also a relevant one. The use of the word "luxury" in the main pitch is telling. Luxuries are never needs -- or they wouldn't be called luxuries. Besides, has the 'As Seen on TV' brand ever stood for luxury?
