• by Danielle Oster , August 21, 2023

Mark-Cuban backed flushable sanitary wipe company Dude Wipes -- the brand that offers butt cleanliness while protecting fragile masculinity by reassuring men this product is especially for them -- has launched its first-ever brand campaign.

“Best Clean, Pants Down” debuts with a pair of 30-second ads helmed by director Chris Woods. The spots roll out in select cities -- Baltimore, Buffalo, Fresno, Milwaukee, New Orleans and St. Louis -- across social platforms CTV, Spotify, and other digital platforms. The campaign will then ramp up as a national effort in January, including national broadcast placements.

The pair of ads, which also will run in shorter cut-downs, take different routes to introducing the “Best Clean, Pants Down” tagline. “Drop Your Drawers” evokes retro ‘80s advertising for CPG brands, with the jingle bearing a resemblance to Mentos’ classic earworm, over footage of men lowering their pants to show off their clean underwear. “Relearning to Wipe” shows man-children sitting in what appears to be an elementary school classroom to learn about how to solve their bathroom hygiene shortcomings -- with partners in tow. Just wait until they hear about bidets!

The campaign is the culmination of the brand’s work with creative and strategic agency partner Curiosity, following Dude Wipes’ selection of the Cincinnati-based agency as its agency of record last September.

“We've been able to do a pretty decent job at marketing over the years, but we felt the brand was missing a catchy sell-slogan to bring it all together and take DUDE Wipes to the next level,” Dude Wipes Co-Founder and CMO Ryan Meegan said in a statement. “So, we tasked Curiosity with bringing us a 'big idea' that would communicate to customers the fun nature of our brand and, more so, the complete clean Dude Wipes provides over toilet paper.”

The campaign pursues a strategy of targeting men aged 18-44, as well as the women in the same age range who suffer their partners’ hygienic shortcomings and are more likely to take primary responsibility for household purchases.

Curiosity and the brand drew from insights that the adult wipes category only has about 34% household penetration in the U.S., leading to campaign goals to heighten brand and category awareness, educate consumers, and ease any stigma around using flushable wipes. Curiosity’s research also uncovered that many men lack confidence around tuchus tidiness, providing a perfect opportunity to capitalize on the fragile male psyche with a salient sales pitch.

“The DUDES’ challenge to us was clear: Make DUDE Wipes famous,” Curiosity creative director Matt Cragnolin said in a statement. “In order to do that, we knew we had to write the catchiest song about grown adults wiping their bum-bums and dropping trou known to man.”