Commentary

Angel Soft's Emotional Appeal Can't Transcend Product Category

I am an inveterate romantic and, as such, recently found myself wandering the toilet aisle at a Lowe’s in Nanuet. I was there as part of an elaborate plan to surprise my wife, who’d noticed a foul pong emanating from the general vicinity of the kids’ toilet one or 18 months ago and had mentioned it a “few” times since then. My idea was that I’d buy a new toilet, find a plumber to swap it in for its fragrant forbear, then point to it as both a small and non-stinky token of my love and incontrovertible evidence that I am capable of handling projects more complex than coat-zippering.

As witnessed by my wife’s response (“please, please, please tell me you didn’t install that yourself”), the gesture went over spectacularly well. She wasn’t imagining the odor - given that this column occasionally arrives around mealtime, I won’t say more beyond than that standing water was a contributing factor - so everybody enjoyed the new-toilet smell for the few minutes it lasted. But since then, I’ve been left with a case of the post-project blues. How does one top the successful purchase of an item available in hundreds of stores and the subsequent successful dialing of a phone/scheduling of an appointment to bring someone in to render that item functional?

By taking a good, hard look at all products related to that item, that’s how. The hand-soap dispenser checked out (it bloops precisely the right amount of soap every time), as did the kiddie potty seat (I was going to go on an American-made-plastic-RULZ tangent here, but it turns out that Baby Björn products are manufactured in Sweden. Who knew?). Only the toilet paper gave me pause, and only because the particular brand recently narrowed the width of its sheets by what it probably thought was an unnoticeable amount. But I noticed, pal. I noticed.

Then, as if sent by a velvety angel, Angel Soft popped into my Twitter feed, promo-tweeting news of its most recent brand video. Big believer in destiny and coincidence that I am, I abandoned kid #1 on the throne and decamped for the Video Critique testing grotto.

The clip, “Grander Parents,” is quite odd, not so much in execution as in approach. You know that whole thing about how brands absolutely triple-super-must create emotional bonds with their consumers - you know, the one that has birthed 72 million PowerPoint slides? Angel Soft tries to do that, but for a product that wouldn’t seem capable of connecting on a deep, powerful level with most people.

It’s toilet paper. It has a very specific application. While I’m certain some consumers have a specific preference, the difference between the lowliest brand and the chi-chi-est one isn’t as profound as, say, the difference between a Scion and an Audi. You know what toilet paper I like best? The one that’s there when I need it.

Thus Angel Soft’s bond-building exercise, while lovely and executed with great subtlety, seems irrelevant to the matter at hand. “Grander Parents” kicks off with a shot of Hailey, a child who’s either blissfully sweet and happy or a Lohanian acting prodigy. Then we cut over to her grandparents, who assumed custody of Hailey when her father (their son) went to prison. “We want to be the grandparents knowing that we have to be the parents,” the grandmother says. Later, the grandfather chokes up when he describes how Hailey declined to use money earmarked for a school book fair tchotchke on herself, instead purchasing a stuffed animal mama tiger holding her cub for him.

Affecting stuff, right? These are decent people answering the call of duty in a powerful, meaningful way. But again: It’s toilet paper we’re dealing with here, an item. Angel Soft can tack on whatever connective slogan it wants - in this instance, “just when you were ready to be soft, you found your strong side too” - but that can’t divert the emotional connection from the family to the product.

I applaud Angel Soft for trying something different - fluffy-cloud and friendly-bear imagery remains as dopey now as it was when it debuted at the turn of the century - but I have to think the brand would’ve been better off sticking with the line of attack in an ad from earlier this year. That one, “Triple Threat,” features a mom chasing around a toddler in the throes of toilet-training and boasts a legitimately surprising reveal (well, for those of us who didn’t think too deeply about the title, anyway). “Grander Parents” might cross off the two key items on the brand- and product-attribute checklist - toughness and softness - but it can’t transcend the practical nature of the product it’s pushing.

Postscript: Right before I filed this thing, it came to my attention that today happens to be World Toilet Day. I’m not making this up. Be sure to tell your toilet you love it when you tuck it in tonight, okay?

1 comment about " Angel Soft's Emotional Appeal Can't Transcend Product Category".
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  1. Cynthia Amorese from JAL Enterprises NY, November 19, 2015 at 8:10 p.m.

    Another brilliant piece, Larry! In another era, you would have been the popular columnist for some daily newspaper, many subscribing just for their weekly glimpse into the quirky life they imagined you leading.  In honor of World Toilet Day, I'll mention that my current favorite TV commercial is Daddy Gator, the "sees all and forgets nothing" ad for Quilted Northern Toilet Paper that carries the tagline "Designed to be forgotten." There's another in the series called "Conductor Randy" that's also pretty funny (but not for Constable Bob, who REALLY sees all).  

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