California’s drought was the worst on record. The Stealth® Toilet is the world’s most water efficient loo. Your average toilet can waste up to 20,000 gallons of water a year. In our research, every time our team unearthed a new fact, it was a jaw dropping “WTF” superlative. This behavioral insight born of product and situational truths, gave rise to #WhatTheFlush. While water conservation was on the lips of many Californians, most people had a significantly high level of discomfort and all-round aversion when talking about toilets. #WhatTheFlush took advantage of this natural tension developing the PottyTalk cornerstone content piece supported by the print, OOH, social and media relations elements. The supporting fact driven campaign messages touted the water-conserving advantages of the Stealth® Toilet, establishing it as a must have water-saving addition to any household.

Over a period of 6 months, we leveraged brand ambassadors, partnering with Jenni Pulos, known for Bravo’s hit series “Flipping Out”, and using her as the campaign’s key spokesperson. Additionally, the campaign partnered with influencers in the home design space for a social media campaign that involved replacing their current toilets with the Stealth® Toilet and featuring reviews on their blogs, which placed Niagara into the dialogue for bathroom remodels. We then drove purchase intent by creating disruptive digital content in the form of “Potty Talk”, a humorous online video featuring Jenni Pulos, developing a campaign microsite to drive purchase of the Stealth® Toilet on HomeDepot.com with a clear call to action of “buy now”, and ran disruptive out-of-home advertisements. Additionally, we secured earned media coverage around the partnership with Jenni Pulos and established a humorous social media tone of voice and published ongoing social posts to support the campaign.

The campaign exceeded objectives, including sales goals (confidential). Immediately following the #WhatTheFlush campaign launch, sales increased by 67 percent. Total volume sales of the Stealth® Toilet (between 4/1/16 to 10/1/16) will help save up to 766,340,000 gallons of water annually. The campaign drove 48,738 visits to WhatThefFlush.com from April 1 to October 3, 2016, with an astounding 6:35 average time spent on the site and 2,141 clicks to “buy now.” Additionally, it sold over 720 toilets at Home Depot stores during campaign-integrated store events.

The campaign engaged with over 16 million consumers online, with the “Potty Talk” video viewed 212,494 times across Facebook and YouTube, 12 million Facebook impressions garnered between April and September 2016, and 3,996,348 impressions with 11,820 positive fan engagements earned from the influencer campaign. Additionally, the campaign earned high praise from HubSpot’s blog in the article “10 Companies with Unexpectedly Good Twitter Content.”