20 Million Views Later, How Poo~Pourri Made a Splash on Social Media

Brands are always attempting to step into the limelight with each promotional activity they churn out. Yet, with an overload of content on the ‘net, a whole campaign, never mind a single ad, can get lost in the noise. Innovating to remain relevant and tapping into the psyche of the smartphone generation is becoming harder as networks become more niche and people are able to filter traditional marketing.

Poo~Pourri, the brand that has designed a spray to eliminate odor while doing your business, has managed to crack the viral code and got heads turning with just its first ever social media marketing campaign. Its quirky strategy and its way with toilet humor caught our eye and left us convinced that it would make a good read. Here is an analysis of how the brand is grabbing eyeballs on social media.

Fan, Followers and Everyone Else

Poo~Pourri’s social prowess extends over Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and Instagram. The brand’s ‘Girls Don’t Poop’ ad went live on YouTube on the 10th of September, following which its Facebook fan base grew by 70% and currently stands at over 24,000 fans while its Twitter followers doubled and became a group of 3,000 Tweeple. Even though the brand became active on YouTube less than 2 months ago, they’ve already attracted over 12,000 subscribers. This is huge especially since this is a social network where many brands usually have a much smaller number of people subscribing to their channel.

Considering that the brand caters to a super fine niche, particularly one that deals with such a private subject, these numbers are something of an achievement and shows that even the wackiest of industries can make social media work for them with the right content.

Content is King

The brand’s Facebook page brings together a variety of content pieces. Toilet jokes usually carry the risk of coming off as crass and unrefined humor, whereas Poo~Pourri’s ad and its whole content strategy is the anti-thesis of it. The brand’s content, other than presenting toilet jokes with style, is also seasoned with funny videos, questions related to pop culture and interactive updates about the product. On why the brand talks less about itself, Nicole Story, Poo Marketing Director of Poo~Pourri explained, “I like to go by the 10-1 rule. For every 1 hard-sell/product post, I try to post 10 entertainment posts. People don’t come to Facebook to be sold, they come to Facebook to escape their day and to be entertained. Poo~Pourri wants to make people giggle as often as they poop—every day… sometimes twice a day.”

To measure the impact of these posts, we used Unmetric’s Engagement Score, which takes in to account the number of Likes, Comments, Shares and Estimated Impressions, to give each post a benchmarkable score that enables easy comparison. In spite of posting only 26 updates in the time period analyzed (which is less than one post a day), the brand managed to receive an average engagement score of 282. The most engaging post is that of a contest involving free giveaways with an engagement Score of 1,279.

On Twitter, the brand’s vision and mission is re-enforced over and over. Poo~Pourri’s proactive tweets are combined with hashtags like #nomorestinkypoo and #Poo~Pourriworks to make them even more engaging, with both hashtags receiving an engagement score of over 500. The 466 tweets that the brand sent out during the 30 day time period analyzed was Favorited 237 times, retweeted 281 times and saw 123 replies from Twitter users. This is almost double what the Home Care sector average managed in the same time period.

[*Hashtags that are also used by other brands.]

Poo~Pourri’s YouTube channel has only 3 videos, but all are well ideated and smartly filmed. The Poo~Pourri ad (which marked the first marketing campaign for the brand) boasted 17 million views in just a month of being uploaded. The juxtaposition of a posh girl in a very unposh situation certainly seemed to capture people’s attention. The actress’s deadpan rendition of the hilarious script with an upper class English accent doesn’t fail to tickle the funny bone. In spite of having only 3 videos in its channel, the brand managed to receive almost 20 million views and 12,000 subscribers. What does this mean? Your content has to give people a compelling reason to share it. In our view, it was the sophisticated delivery of a topic that is considered distasteful and inappropriate that made the video shareable.

Consumer is also the King

Poo~Pourri treats its customers much like it treats poo… err, by that we mean with a positive attitude. On Facebook, they received 279 fan posts of which they replied to 27. Fan posts which didn’t require replying (such as appreciations) were liked and at the least acknowledged. Though their reply rate on Facebook is only 10%, the effort taken to like other fan posts is commendable.

On Twitter, while many brands answer with a robotic reply consisting of a generic customer care number or e-mail ID, Poo~Pourri’s replies are completely personalized. The conversations with the brand were recognized and addressed with a light-hearted, problem-solving approach.

@LezMamas OMG, NOT okay! PLEASE call our customer service team and ask for Sandy, she will be HAPPY to make this right. 9728188200

— Poo~Pourri (@PooPourri) October 9, 2013

 

The brand was mentioned over 1,000 times during the time period analyzed. Though they replied to only 300 of these, their Average Reply Time (ART) is under 90 minutes. The graph below indicates a spike in mentions after the ad went live on YouTube and shows how fast news can jump and travel from one social network to another. The reply line almost runs parallel with the mention line, which is evidence that that the brand has a team and strategy to reply to as many queries as possible and engage with its audience.

Over and above this, they replied on weekends whereas many other brands have active customer service only over the weekdays.

How do they stack up against competitors?

Though Poo~Pourri’s product is one of a kind and still doesn’t have direct competitors, a basic comparison with room freshener brands show that the brand is already a pro when it comes to leveraging social media. For example, on Facebook, Glade received an average engagement score of 50 on 32 Admin Posts whereas Poo~Pourri scored an engagement score of 282 on their 26 posts. In terms of fan growth rate, the brand has over taken both AirWick and Glade. On Twitter, Poo~Pourri replied to 309 mentions in an average of 1 hour and 26 minutes while Glade took over 6 hours to make 67 replies.

Charmin, the toilet paper brand, produces content that is also roughly based on toilet humor. Though the brand loses to Poo~Pourri on Facebook engagement, Poo~Pourri can definitely learn from Charmin’s Twitter handle. Charmin’s follower base is much larger and their proactive tweets engage better.

Many sectors are seeing great success on Facebook but haven’t been able to quite get the same chemistry with people on other social networks. Poo~Pourri, on the other hand, seems to be quite comfortable with all social networks and hence has access to rope in a variety of consumers in to their niche market. Nicole Story has some advice for brands looking to expand their presence to other social networks, “Social media is such a unique and immediate way to have a real brand-to-person conversation. Listen to your followers and listen to what they care about. Is it cool human stories, cute puppies (who doesn’t love cute puppies?!), is it humor? Just try to find stories and graphics that relate back to the product. For example, in our Fanny Friday feature we’ll feature adorable animal bums! Track which posts get the most engagement and do more of that.”

With a great presence across so many social networks and a strategy customized to each one, it’s little wonder the ‘sold’ number, on the Poo~Pourri website, is constantly increasing (although a cynical colleague mentioned that this might just be a pre-programmed counter).

Even though many had trouble believing that such a product actually exists when first hearing about it, the video, backed up with a great presence across social networking sites have served to erase doubts. Though it might well be first mover’s advantage, and the bold and incredibly funny advert surely ensures that Poo~Pourri is on its way to becoming a household name.

Methodology

All data has been compiled and analyzed from the Unmetric platform which tracks dozens of metrics to enable brands to benchmark themselves against competitors and their industry sector for the time period of September 15th – October 15th, 2013. Gain access to all this data by claiming a free trial.

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This article was initially published on Social Media Today.