• by Les Luchter , July 26, 2024

 Have you met Mel, a singing and talking toilet, and his partner in fighting pipe-clogging crimes, Detective Drains?

The unusual duo, who debuted at VidCon 2024 last month in Anaheim, comes from the four-year-old Responsible Flushing Alliance (RFA), a trade association whose CPG members include Clorox, Kimberly-Clark, Unilever and Procter & Gamble.

The group’s aim: to get consumers to look for the “Do Not Flush” symbol on packages of baby wipes, cleaning wipes, makeup removal wipes and more, and to thus #FlushSmart.

Following the 2022 launch of a California law requiring the symbol be used for non-flushable wipes (similar laws are in effect in six other states, and federal legislation awaits Senate approval), RFA has been busy crafting creative ways to get its message across.

A central figure has been a “Clog Monster” character, with the slogan “Don’t Feed the Clog Monster,” who a year ago showed up in a campaign intended to evoke movie trailers and posters.

And next year, RFA President Lara Wyss tells Marketing Daily, the group is considering a campaign around the concept of “potty training for grown-ups.”

Those grown-ups, in the case of the 55,000 VidCon attendees, consisted of a lot of Gen Z and Gen Alpha consumers, who Wyss says are “particularly important to reach” as they “must live with the wastewater infrastructure for years to come.”

The outdoor RFA booth, done entirely in black-and-white – except for yellow crime tape and evidence markers -- was designed to evoke a film noir atmosphere, Wyss says. The rest of VidCon, she notes, “was like color overload. We really stood out.”

While Mel and Detective Drains had some set spiel, the toilet also interacted directly with attendees to “help us solve toilet crimes….piggybacking off of true crime that’s so popular and in the zeitgeist right now.”

The activation, which included a voice actor behind the scenes, was conceived by RFA’s integrated communications agency Burson, with toilet/actor coordination by production company Unrivaled and storytelling assistance from creative partner HZ.

Since VidCon, RFA has continued the talking toilet campaign with social media posts and an active landing page. There’s also an-onsite toolkit, containing materials for wastewater agencies or CPG marketers to use in their own campaigns.

As of last week, Wyss says, RFA’s own social media with Mel and Detective Drains had generated over 3 million views, while dozens of organic social posts from VidCon attendees has brought in over 18 million impressions.

In addition, she says, 13 TV outlets, from the city of Los Angeles to the state of Georgia to the country of Australia, ran segments on the activation.

The toilet crimes campaign will continue for another couple of months, Wyss says, as “we have a lot of content that we haven’t released yet.”