Charmin’s Smart Sponsorship Builds Brand

The woman in my life hates a dirty public bathroom (understandably so). Without being gross, it’s pretty obvious that no one likes a dirty public bathroom, but sometimes we just don’t have any alternative. When you gotta go, you gotta go, and sometimes you just have to suffer through a bad experience.

Charmin thinks that it doesn’t have to be this way – they’ve sponsored a simple website that makes it easy to find a nice clean public bathroom. In the process, they’ve managed to garner some incredible advertising. Here’s what I like about their decision to sponsor this website:

1) Charmin didn’t shy away from being direct. The name of this website is SitOrSquat.com, and the connotations associated with that name are…clear. While a lot of companies would be reluctant to sponsor a site with such a “precise” name, Charmin took a mature and realistic perspective. Kudos.

2) Charmin recognized the opportunity to add value. I’m always telling clients that the best way to build a successful website is to add something to the community. Charmin’s sponsorship ads value by making it easy for people to find good bathrooms and list off bad ones.

3) The connection isn’t forced. Charmin has sponsored a website about clean bathrooms and it makes perfect sense for them to do so. Compare that to Kroger, who has been running radio ads in Denver that say that “King Soopers is the official grocery store of the Denver Nuggets.” So? What does NBA basketball have to do with groceries? Anyone? Sponsorships work best when they make sense because we’re more likely to remember things that are naturally connected.

4) This was probably incredibly inexpensive (comparatively speaking). I can’t imagine that SitOrSquat.com was any more expensive than one national ad buy for a professionally produced T.V. spot. This isn’t to say that the site is cheap or anything (it’s not), but it’s important to recognize that sponsoring a website is often less expensive than a simple television commercial (shout out to Jon and Danika – nice job).

5) Charmin has positioned itself as tech-savvy. For a lot of people, the biggest value of SitOrSquat.com is that you can use it on your GPS enabled mobile phone. That way, when you’re out and about, a quick check of the site tells you where you are in relation to a clean bathroom. Charmin’s sponsorship of this site shows that they’re savvy to technology, and there are a lot of consumers who appreciate that.

6) It’s funny. Most people think the SitOrSquat.com website is cute and fun. Making people laugh is almost always a good thing.

I hope that Charmin’s actions inspire other people – both advertisers and developers – to be a part of creating something funny, smart, clever, and hopefully useful.