Clorox has jumped into the toilet-themed commercial fray with a series of nauseating commercials featuring a woman dating a toilet bowl brush.
Yes, that's right. A woman. Dating. A toilet brush.
Apparently, someone at the Oakland, California-based The Clorox Company, which is famed for its bleach, thought it was a good idea to launch a campaign in honor of National Breakup Day, which is apparently a real thing that happens on February 13, starring a seemingly pleasant woman who has been in a relationship with a toilet brush.
The first commercial features the woman and a man dressed in a toilet brush costume on a date at a fancy restaurant. "It's not you," she claims. "Well, it is you." The Toilet Brush Man's face falls. She says what they have "stinks." He confesses he's "too old-fashioned." She adds, "You just sit in the corner and -- ew."
He ventures a possible solution: "Does your sister have a toilet?" Luckily, Clorox makes a ToiletWand. She goes home to use her ToiletWand, and the Toilet Brush Man is left to pick up the check.
The caption accompanying the video on YouTube exhorts women to "Fall in love with an easy, dreamy cleaning experience."
In the second of the three-part series, the Toilet Brush Man attempts to woo her back a la John Cusack in "Say Anything." The Toilet Brush Man wails: "What's he got that I don't?" The woman replies: "He's not a potty mouth." A voice over encourages women to "Break up with the brush."
In the third installment, the two experience an awkward post-breakup run-in at a park. The Toilet Brush Man spots the ToiletWand in her bag of groceries. "Is that who I think it is?" he queries. "He takes me places you never could," she reveals. "Oh, man," he concludes. "Love stinks. Or is it me?"
Thus far, the videos have returned a staggering low number of viewers. Only one has over 100 views, with a grand total of 101. On Twitter, where Clorox has around 110,000 followers, the videos have generated little in the way of brand's much sought-after engagement.
Clorox isn't alone in attempting to use toilet humor to move product.
Who could forget Squatty Potty's rainbow ice cream excreting unicorn? A delightful mix of highbrow absurdity and multicolored fun, "This Unicorn Changed the Way I Poop" has nearly 30 million views to date.
Poo-Pourri dazzled viewers with a delightfully entertaining peek into the challenges facing a well-mannered woman in the toilet. "Girls Don't Poop" has amassed almost 40 million views.
Febreze paid in the neighborhood of $5 million to air a genteel expose of the national bathroom break movement during last month's Super Bowl. "Halftime #BathroomBreak" has pulled in a not-to-be-ashamed-of 275,000 views.
But Clorox falls short where others have excelled in the bathroom humor-for-profits department. Instead of coupling the discreet with the disgusting, the campaign misses the mark and produces a nauseating vision of a woman sitting across the table from a toilet blush that one can't help but think is covered in, well, crap.
And that's not entertaining. It's just gross.
