Sometimes you see a marketing strategy and all you can do is shake your head and wonder who came up with such an idea. Usually that’s a bad thing, but not in this case. In what may be the best advertisement for any product ever devised, this commercial features a handsome prince and a unicorn that poops ice cream who want to change the way you go to the bathroom forever. You really just need to see this to believe it.
If you watched this video, you now know that we weren’t lying, and that there are indeed a royal and an ice cream-pooping unicorn (I never envisioned a scenario where I would type that phrase) that want to change the way you relieve yourself. Perhaps even better than that (okay, not better, but still pretty hilarious), the Squatty Potty, as this magical new product is called, was actually featured some months back on ABC’s invention-themed reality show Shark Tank.
I do have to say, whoever came up with this marketing strategy is something of a maverick genius. Seriously, it’s damn near impossible to look away. You don’t think it’s real at first (it does start with a prince licking unicorn poop after all), but then it dawns on you that, yes, this is a very real advertisement that is trying to sell you a very real product.
It’s really too bad that this sense of humor doesn’t appear to extend beyond this particular commercial. If you go to the Squatty Potty website, it’s all very cut and dried. Okay, it’s a little bit funny, but nothing close to what you see here. For the most part it’s all, “Yes, this is a real thing, here’s how it works, and here’s why you should buy it.”
And while it’s not nearly as good as the ad, it’s worth checking out the inventors pitch their product on Shark Tank, if only to watch the faces the panel members make while watching a very clinical animated video.
This is easily the best advertisement I’ve seen in I don’t even know how long. It’s one of those concepts that someone has but that is almost immediately dismissed as too ridiculous. But thankfully there’s at least one visionary out there who stood up and said, “No, I’m not going to drop it, I’m going to make a commercial about a unicorn pooping ice cream, and people are going to love it.” And we certainly do.
