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March 12, 2006

A passionate Ferrari in the bathroom

Stephen suffered him to pull out and hold up on show by its corner a dirty crumpled handkerchief. Buck Mulligan wiped the razorblade neatly. Then, gazing over the handkerchief, he said:

−− The bard's noserag! A new art colour for our Irish poets: snotgreen. You can almost taste it, can't you?

James Joyce, Ulysses


Renova, a Portuguese company is offering toilet paper in non-standard colors: black and red. The black toilet paper came out last year and sold well, and the company has decided to launch red toilet paper "for those wanting to inject more passion into their bathrooms."

Now, I don't know about you, but when I think of passion, I don't think of bathrooms, and when I think of bathrooms, I don't think about passion. But then again, I'm not in marketing, a field in which one thinks of passion everywhere.

"We are trying to create a niche market for value-added household products in nations with a high purchasing power," he said.
Doesn't that sound . . . passionate? And if you doubt that, listen to this:
"It is a red that makes a huge impact, like a Ferrari," Renova international brand manager Jose Manuel Pinheiro told AFP.

So now we have a passionate Ferrari in our bathroom. Watch out when you use the stuff. Vroom, vroom!

UPDATE (3/13): Sensible Mom thinks the marketers are nuts: "It makes me wonder if they test marketed the concept with women since it won't work for us for obvious reasons." Wish I had thought of that.