So, a unicorn farted golden rainbows into a bottle, and the resulting, um, product is for sale. And it's guaranteed to give you "the best-smelling poop of your life" or your money back.
This is not a scatological acid trip, but it might be the closest you'll get.
Squatty Potty, dubbed "the stool for better stools," has launched its first brand extension, a toilet spray, by bringing back its adorably fluffy animatronic puppet from last year's viral video, "This unicorn changed the way I poop."
The new four-minute ad, from viral mavens the Harmon Brothers, uses the same handsome princely narrator and doe-eyed mythical creature to introduce Unicorn Gold, an essential oil- and gold-flecked competitor to Poo-Pourri and other bathroom odor eaters.
The prince and unicorn have become so popular—the earlier ad has racked up more than 120 million views since last fall—that the Harmons felt confident bringing them back.
"We've seen that with Hollywood movies, you can't often find a sequel that's as good or better than the original, and for ad campaigns, that's even more true," Benton Crane, managing director at the Provo, Utah-based Harmon Brothers, tells AdFreak. "We knew it was a pretty tall order to do a sequel, but we were willing to take on the challenge. History will be the judge."
The agency also created Poo-Pourri's viral video "Girls Don't Poop," but hasn't worked with that brand for several years. Squatty Potty quietly debuted the new category challenger, Unicorn Gold, earlier this year, naming the product after the earlier hit campaign that boosted online sales of the Squatty Potty stool by 600 percent last holiday season.
For Unicorn Gold, Squatty Potty executives wanted a digital media push for fourth quarter, one of its biggest sales periods. (The company is well aware that its core product can be a gag gift, and expects the add-on may be too. But numbers are numbers.)
The video, which should be called "Squatty Potty 2: Fruity Booty," combines what the Harmons do best—product demos mixed with cheeky humor interwoven with a direct-sell message. There's also an outhouse explosion, a fart-capturing suction device and a reference to "paying your taxes to Prince John."
Aiming to set Unicorn Gold apart from Poo-Pourri and its ilk, the fantastical period-set video gives a play-by-play of how the product works. There's a poop emoji as a visual aid. And elaborately dressed royal ladies who "release the Kraken."
Unicorn Gold "protects the drop zone," says the video, and not just the surface of the toilet water, so the stank never leaves the bowl. It comes in scents like Pinch of Vanilla, Citrus Squeeze and Tropical Dropsicle.
The charmingly affected narrator makes sure viewers know "this is not a joke," and that you'll no longer have to smell the "icebergs, mudslides, stalactites and anacondas" (again, visual aids!) in your bathroom because the gold particles in the product "cling like magnets to poop fumes."
Dave Vance, who worked on the first Squatty Potty ad, wrote the new script with Daniel Harmon and other frequent agency collaborators. The video was filmed in Salt Lake City. (Harmon Brothers staged a Hollywood-style red-carpet premiere for the ad this week.)
The campaign launches Thursday on Facebook, where agency and brand execs hope it will take off organically with likes, views and shares. They're including a media buy on YouTube in the initial rollout.
Squatty Potty, which started as a home-based business in Utah before landing its Shark Tank investor, pulled in more than $15 million in sales for its core product last year, which also retails at chains like Bed, Bath & Beyond and Target.
Unicorn Gold is expected to have similar distribution.
CREDITS
Client: Squatty Potty/Unicorn Gold
Agency: Harmon Brothers
Creative Director: Daniel Harmon
Agency Managing Director: Benton Crane
Art Director: Dillon Eleffson
Account Director: Theron Harmon
Writers: Dave Vance, Mallory Everton, Jonny Vance, Daniel Harmon
Executive Producer: Theron Harmon
Producer and 1st AD: James Dayton
Co-producers: Patrick Newman, Shane Rickard
Lead Actor: Wes Tolman
In the role of "The Duchess": Amy Carlin
Director of Photography: Tyler Stevens
Editor: Kaitlin Snow
Digital Effects Lead: Nick Dixon
Responsible on the client side:
CEO Bobby Edwards
Co-Founders: Bill Edwards, Judy Edwards
Director of Marketing & Retail Relations: Jason Burrows
Creative Director: Damaris Cluff