The (Magnesium) Toilet Paper Guys

(Posted by Patrick Sullivan Jr.)

Last week myself and two other Jigsaw Health employees attended the American Association of Naturopathic Practioners (AANP) annual convention as trade show exhibitors.  We quickly became known as "The Toilet Paper Guys."  Why?  We printed up 800 rolls of custom toilet paper with this message:

Pretty funny, eh?  We sure thought so, but honestly, we weren't totally sure how well that message would play.  Turns out, it was PERFECT!  The custom toilet paper was a HUGE hit!!  VERY memorable and 99% of people got the joke.  (A few people thought the toilet paper was the actual product -- like we had invented some sort of magnesium toilet paper that absorbed through the anus.  LOL!  ;-) 

The show attendance was smaller than expected but we gathered a ton of good leads using our "$100 No Diarrhea Challenge."  (Take Jigsaw Magnesium w/SRT for a month and if it causes diarrhea, we'll give you $100.  And quite honestly, most of the docs really didn't even care about the $100 challenge, they were just really interested to try out the product either for themselves or for a patient.) 

More than anything, the vibe we created was super-positive and the gimmick was dead on message for this crowd.  There were at least a dozen and half people who told us (other vendors included) that we had the best marketing idea they'd ever seen!  :)

What was really funny is that once you "go there", it's pretty easy to keep coming up with clever ideas to keep reinforcing your message.

1. We put our toilet paper into all the bathrooms of the conference center.  Even asked some ladies to put it into the women's restrooms.
    
2. I walked around for two days with toilet paper taped to the bottom of my shoe.  I'd walk from our booth to get some water and 40 people would say, "Excuse me, you have something on your shoe."  I'd answer, "I know, it's marketing."  And they laughed because by that point, everyone knew us as The Toilet Paper Guys.
    
3. We trashed the booth next to us on the last day.  (She was cool with it and thought it was hilarious.) 
   
    
4. We built a column of toilet paper 26 rolls high. 
5. We unrolled the toilet paper 30 yards across the trade show room.
6. We even had a joke contest where the winner won $100 for the best potty joke.  Winner: "Hey Joe, you need a new butt."  "Why is that Jeff?"  "Because yours has a crack in it."  (Slim pickins.)

For the next show, I think we may get an actual toilet, make one of us sit on it (pants down), reading the newspaper, and put a caption above that says, "This guy should have used Jigsaw Magnesium with Sustained Release Technology.  Poor guy."  Or something like that.

(James Windrow and Greg Davis at the booth, behind our Diarrhea / No Diarrhea boxes.)

Comments

[John Johnson]

That's hilarious! I'm afraid I'll never understand marketing (except maybe how to market to geeks). It's always great to step out on a limb and be wildly successful.

[Patrick Sullivan Jr.]

Thx John! Yeah, to say we had a lot of fun would be understating it BIG TIME.