• by Barbara Lippert , Columnist, October 4, 2024

“I like weirdos. I am a weirdo. I like playing weirdos, and I like reaching out to fellow weirdos. And this was just another venue for doing that.”

That’s former "Saturday Night Live" star Kate McKinnon, telling the Associated Press about her new book for middle-schoolers, “The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science.”

But she could also be talking about her scene-stealing work in last year’s blockbuster "Barbie" movie.

Way before the word “weird” was politicized, she played Weird Barbie, a stand-alone character. In great contrast to the pure pink perfection of the other dolls in Barbie Land, she’d been played with “too hard.” (Sadly, that’s the fate of too many Barbies.)  She sported electro-shocked, upright hair, a magic-marker-scrawled face, and legs permanently in “the splits.”

Still, Weird Barbie turned out to be the wise-woman-shaman, dispensing clarity to stereotypical Barbie, giving her the strength she needed to break free into the real world.

McKinnon’s latest project, for Philips Sonicare, fits precisely into that kind of weirdo-sphere.

In the 30-second spot, McKinnon shows up in a nervous dude’s large, brick-walled bathroom, just as he’s psyching himself up in front of the mirror for a job interview.

She introduces herself as Susan Toothbrush (points for not making the name Susie, like Susie Chapstick) and explains plainly, “I come through walls to help people make better decisions about their oral healthcare.”

The concept, of some sort of expert abruptly arriving in your home dispensing advice, is as old as TV advertising itself-- think the Man from Glad who arrived through a window by pontoon, and Mr. Clean, a self-powering genie.

But those were mythical men in kitchens, talking to housewives.

It’s taken till now to get an oral enthusiast woman to invade a bathroom to talk to a man.

Seriously, the big difference with this work, as opposed to the commercials in the 1960s and ‘70s, is that it’s deliciously self-aware.  It’s said that McKinnon came to Philips Sonicare with the concept, and it shows.

Created with Fleishman-Hillard, with Lord Danger for production, the content will appear on social media, in retail stores,on  linear TV and programmatic video on YouTube, Prime Video, Meta, TikTok and Snap.

Kate/Susan is dressed in a bright blue pantsuit, with some beading along the lapels, which sure beats a pink, wand-holding “tooth fairy” look.  Props to the pin on her lapel—a white molar. 

Ms. Toothbrush’s mission is to push the “Phillips Sonic Care Switch,” telling the guy in the suit and tie to ditch his “old bristlestick”  (icky manual toothbrush) to become a power user and upgrade to the Philips Sonicare DiamondClean Smart brush.

She straightforwardly, and simply, spouts a ton of benefits. Some of the copy gets blocky, but she mixes in great stage work/physical comedy while attending to his hair and suit, as she fast-talks the lines.

“Two minutes of brushstrokes with the Phillips Sonicare is like an entire month of brushing with this old thing,” she tells him as she throws his old brush up in the air.

One thing I did find weird: When the spot cuts to the job applicant using his DiamondClean Smart device, he brushes in a weird zig-zag, horizontal line.

As a mostly up-and-down brusher, I thought that was a no-no.  But looking into it on the site of the American Dental Association, I discovered that there’s no straight up-and-down or side-to-side protocol. Rather, “Dentists recommend brushing in a circular motion, with the toothbrush inserted at a 45-degree angle.” 

Another 15-second spot shows her snooping around the bathroom at a party (as one does) replacing the party-thrower’s old manual toothbrush with a Philips Sonicare device. She apparently has a bunch of them stored inside her suit jacket.

Back in the job-man’s bathroom, Madam Toothbrush gets a little funny-weird again at the end. The guy leaves, now with new confidence and a refreshed mouth, and as he does, she asks him for a WiFi password so she can “hang.”

It would seem she has other bathrooms to slip into to talk “the switch.”

Of course, the switch is not the kind of shock that Bob Dylan delivered at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 by going electric on his guitar. At this point, the benefits of a non-manual toothbrush are well known.

But Ms. Susan brings new juice to the argument.

And now that I get it, I wouldn’t mind a weirdo oral-care whiz to come through my wall.