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You might be wondering what Super Bowel Monday is.
Well, it’s the day after the Super Bowl — and the day that submissions were due for bidet-maker Tushy’s Super Bowel contest.
The brand asked followers to submit a photo of their “post-big game poop” to enter. The grand prize: $10K.
Some in the replies were disgusted. Others just wanted to know why.
But 2K+ people submitted photos. Keara Spicer, Tushy’s head of social media and community management, told MarketerHire — and the contest got 2M organic impressions.
Here’s why Tushy considers it a success, according to Spicer and Tushy’s founder and CCO, Miki Agrawal.
It was rule-breaking — just like Tushy.
“We are a brand that really breaks taboos,” Agrawal said. Tushy talks openly about bathroom matters, and that sets it apart from competitors.
Bidet brand Toto is comparatively tame on Twitter and mostly posts about product features. Tushy, meanwhile, posts about IBS and coffee’s effects on the body.
That attracts a different audience: Millennials and the “internet obsessed,” Spicer said.
It had a tie-in to the product.
When Tushy posts on social, there’s always a link to bidet education, Agrawal said. That’s true for the contest, too.
“It’s like, submit your huge, gigantic poop and … introducing Tushy, that’ll wash it all off!”
The theory: if Tushy’s gross-out tweets get shared enough, eventually, even the most squeamish will check out the product.
It resonated on the right channels.
This contest found the most traction on Twitter, which made sense to Spicer: “Twitter is where a lot of internet humor is birthed.”
Plus, Twitter is a lot friendlier to bathroom humor than Meta, which rejected some of Tushy’s Valentine’s-themed ads last week for using words like “fart” and “butt.”
It highlighted the human side of social media.
“We want to feel like people talking to people, and not [a] brand talking to people,” Spicer said.
People don’t usually send poop photos to brands, but sometimes they do send poop photos to friends, Spicer said. Tushy is now one of those friends.
Our takeaway?
Agrawal and Spicer think of the contest (and its success) as consistent with Tushy’s larger social media strategy — not a sudden pivot.