Design + Not Clay But… | Harmon Brothers Promote Toilet Design with Cute/Nightmarish NSFW Ad

We’re not above sophomoric humor at CFile. Every so often we run into a product such as the Puking Kitty Saucy Boat and we profile it on the website, wondering, in between snickers, why anyone takes us seriously. One such item that came to our attention recently was the Squatty Potty, a footstool that is placed at the foot of one’s toilet that makes what scientists term “dropping a deuce” easier and healthier for one’s colon. According to Rain Noe at Core 77 the design was featured on the TV show “Shark Tank” and it comes in plastic, plywood or bamboo. Noe explains how this design brings western toilets more in line with floor-level toilets in countries such as Italy or Japan.

So how do you sell people on something like this? In an earlier time this would be advertised on television at 3 a.m., with lousy production values and actors reminiscent of the old lady in the Life Alert Medallion commercials. You’d walk away feeling confused and unclean.

The solution, according to the Harmon Brothers advertising agency, is to confront the strangeness of such a product head-on. In the video above, a man who evokes Westley from The Princess Bride explains the design with the help of a puppet unicorn who uses the Squatty Potty to void rainbow ice cream from its bottom. Cut-away diagrams in the unicorn show the concept of the product, but the yuck factor enhances the message rather than detracts from it. The end result is a commercial that’s sought out by consumers— the pitch has been viewed some 4 million times on YouTube. You can go to the Harmon Brothers page to check out their other projects, they’re all about as strange as this one.

Bill Rodgers is the General Editor of CFile.

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