Advertising By the Roll: The Last, Shameless Frontier

Hmmm, where will I go to escape the advertising assault now that the last, shameless frontier of privacy has been breached?

In recent years, marketers have been pushing forward to frontiers never before imagined in the increasingly difficult battle to break through the clutter. Now it seems they have gone bravely and brazenly into the last frontier.

An Ann Arbor Michigan company is selling ads and coupons on toilet paper. No, I’m not being facetious. You can’t make up this kind of thing. Apparently, the company’s website advises people: “Don’t rush. Look before you flush.”

I earn my living in the marketing profession so a part of me – a very small part that I do my best to suppress – has a grudging respect for this audacious venture. But the rest of me cringes at the thought and wonders about the mindset of the CEO who gave it the go ahead.

The phrase “only in America” comes to mind with apologies to my American readers. I can’t imagine this idea seeing the light of day in any other country. Mind you, if it catches on, I have no doubt others will jump on the rolling bandwagon.

As a former copywriter, a number of taglines leap to mind:

Softmas a baby’s bottom and good for your bottom line.

Clip before your crap.

The perfect captive audience for your advertising message. (To be pitched exclusively to makers of laxatives, probiotic yogurts and high fibre foods.)

I could go on in this direction for hours and quite enjoy it. But it would quickly slide below the line of decency and get me into way too much trouble.

So on to what really bothers me about the idea. It’s not so much the indelicacy of it. I’ve been around long enough that not much surprises me anymore. What raises my hackles is the probability that soon there won’t be anywhere I can hide out where advertising won’t find me.

I’m already bombarded with advertising messages wherever I look: billboards on highways, mobile device advertising, flyers slipped under my door, junk e-mail piling up in my inbox, telemarketers ringing my phone off the hook, and on and on.

What it comes down to is the ever increasing – at all costs and damn the consequences – pursuit for market share and a chunk of our paycheques. Shouldn’t there be a line that no one is allowed to cross in this winner-take-all battle? The bathroom in my home seems to me to be that line.

Thankfully, metaphors are generally not used in advertising. The message has to be immediate requiring little or no cognitive processing. But advertising on toilet paper is a metaphor in and of itself for the final intrusion of marketing into our most private places – if you’ll pardon the pun.

~ Michael Robert Dyet is the author of “Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel” – double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog .

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