• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, July 15, 2009

Just when you think you've seen all the crap possible, the creative shop Skadaddle Media launches the campaign Twitter for Sh-tters to raise money and promote awareness for eco-sanitation toilets in the poorest regions of the world.

It's the first in a series of social marketing campaigns for Wherever the Need (WTN) that draws on raw language, rather than euphemisms, to get the message across. The non-profit's wide departure from traditional fund raising aims to elevate discussions on eco-sanitation and global health and poverty issues in social networks.

The Twitter campaign asks people to tweet about the cause -- "talk shit" -- or ask people to donate to the fund through the WTN Web site. It takes $500 to build one eco-sand toilet. Donations are already growing.

Viral videos uploaded to YouTube and Facebook come next. The video will begin shooting on in mid August. The crew has already begun to tape hundreds of flushing toilets to create music symphonies and videos. The series of marketing events lead up to a big bash on World Toilet Day on Nov. 19.

Until now, donations have been privately funded. Beverly Visty-Doman, executive director of WTN U.S.A., chose Skadaddle to launch the campaign to attack the problem head on. She hopes to raise $1 million from now through November. "We have to talk about shit," she says. "We all do it, and everyone needs sanitation facilities, even people in the poorest countries."

Visty-Doman says similar to Aids back in the day, talking about "shit" today is taboo. A lot of people talk about diarrhea, but they are not willing to say the word "shit" when it comes to sanitation.

"If we're going to talk about sanitation, we need to talk about shit," says Todd Lieman, founder and co-president at Skaddadle. "We need to put it out there, step in it and not be afraid of it."

Lieman realizes the challenges that lie ahead, but says there's no polite conversational way to talk about "shit." Unlike the word "sex," a conversational word that conjures a variety of images, "shit" either sounds technical or people get offended. The hope is to turn "shit" into a sexy cause similar to how people now view water. Initially, people didn't want to pay attention to clean water initiatives because the images were too heartbreaking to view, but over time that changed.

Television, radio and print weren't options for this marketing campaign because of the restrictions on language, but online media gives WTN the ability to more openly promote the cause. Lieman says even the press release announcing the campaign needed to be toned down because of the language. The wire services didn't want to send out the release as written. "No it's not sexy, yes, it's really dirty, but we have to use language that works," Lieman says.

The funds earned from the Twitter campaign will go toward building toilets in India. Think Slumdog Millionaire, the 2008 film directed by Danny Boyle. It's a scenario that WTN wants to avoid. The toilets allow the solid waste to turn into composite and mix with soil, while the liquid waste mixes with water to feed plants.