Dive Brief:
- P&G's Charmin opened 14 restroom stalls in New York's Times Square for the holiday season, per a press release. The actor Dax Shepard helped introduce the effort via a "toilet paper cutting" ceremony.
- The stalls all have themes such as “Mt. Everest” and “Under the Sea” and include immersive sights and sounds. The “Charmin Restrooms” out-of-home (OOH) activation will be open from Dec. 6-24 between 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. daily.
- The effort is a reprise of Charmin providing restrooms in New York City during the holidays from 2006 to 2010.
Dive Insight:
While bringing free toilets to Times Square for the holidays isn't a new idea for Charmin, it does tap into the growing trend of OOH marketing making something of a comeback. A number of brands ran high-profile OOH activations this year as a way to create a more personal touch with audiences as digital channels are dominating marketing strategies. Times Square is a popular location for OOH marketing as it can see up to 480,000 pedestrians a day.
Charmin is making a habit of offering New Yorkers access to free restrooms through OOH marketing campaigns, grabbing attention as consumers go about their day. The trend reflects one way marketers are trying to reach millennials, who aren't interested in traditional ads and have shown a penchant for experiential marketing that they can share with friends on social media. This year, the marketer not only brought back its holiday restrooms along with an immersive element, at the beginning of summer it rolled out toilet-equipped vans which New Yorkers could request via a dedicated microsite for a restroom house call.
What’s interesting is digital marketing is driving OOH in another way, according to a recent analysis from WPP’s GroupM. The agency said OOH is getting a boost because of informed application of data, such as mobile location data, and other technology and has grown from a 6.1% share of its marketing in 2016 to 6.2% this year and expected to rise to 6.3% in 2018, the highest share for OOH since 1993.
