Friday, August 10, 2007

Pity the marketers - part II - with a vengeance

This post will prove beyond a reasonable doubt that I think of "products" regardless of the situation, location or activity. Unfortunately, it might also cause some of you to just stop reading my blog. oh well.
The other day while I was ... well... you'll figure it out, I looked down and saw a LOGO INSIDE the "potty on the wall" (as my son used to call it). There was a corporate logo conspicuously printed on the screen that both deodorizes and prevents foreign objects from entering the drain of the urinal in the public men's room. (yuck, I know, forgive me).

So - why does Rochester Midland Corporation (RMC) want their logo in the toilet? I guess if your product is made for the urinal, and you are the unfortunate fellow responsible for marketing it, you take whatever opportunities present themselves. Poor marketer.

Too bad for RMC that they can't sell that ad space to other companies - and luckily for us... I think it would ruin my day to see a "Drink Budweiser" ad in the urinal... but it would be relevant, I guess ;)

So - looking a bit more into this (why? I have no idea.), the competitive market for these bathroom products is actually fierce! If you do a search for "urinal screens" (omg - this is now in my search history!), you'll see a full and competitive list of advertisers who want your... uh... business. Seems they're paying $2.50 - $3 per click on those terms... and while there's enough data to see search trends on the term "urinal" (go ask the Aussies and Romanians why they lead the pack on that search term), it pales in comparison to the search volume on the more generic term "bathroom" (where the UK pulls ahead in search volume).

Then, of course, there are many definitions for that pair of terms "urinal screen" - just ask ToiletPartitions.com, whose tagline in their ads is "Because no one wants to see your hiney".

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