Dive Temporary:
- Q-tips is making an attempt to make an even bigger splash with its advertising and marketing by means of the introduction of jumbo-sized variations of its cotton swabs and an accompanying digital-first marketing campaign, per particulars shared with Advertising Dive.
- The practically 6-foot-long swabs, referred to as Quge-tips, function in a parody of TV infomercials the place a fictional spokesperson, Bruce Neptune, exhibits off a wide range of purposes, from dusting off heaps of pollen to cleansing up a criminal offense scene. Quge-tips can be found at a web site for $35 a bit whereas provides final.
- Q-tips has enlisted the assistance of different manufacturers, together with Doritos and Goodyear, and content material creators to get the phrase out on social media. That is the primary work from the Elida Magnificence-owned model’s two new companies of report as Q-tips appears to raised have interaction millennials and Gen Z.
Dive Perception:
The over 100-year-old Q-tips model is embracing a “go huge or go residence” angle with Quge-tips, a part of a revamped advertising and marketing technique developed with AORs 3Headed Monster and Jackson Spalding. As with many legacy packaged items entrepreneurs, Q-tips is shifting extra of its focus to digital and social media whereas enacting stunts that would spark on-line dialogue for his or her sheer ridiculousness. Whereas the Quge-tips execution could also be excessive, Q-tips claims the idea is rooted in actual shopper insights.
“Our prospects use Q-tips swabs in many various methods all through their days — from magnificence routines to residence repairs — and lots of have even requested for larger, longer, extra task-specific cotton swabs,” stated Olga Alpeter, advertising and marketing director at Q-tips, in a press assertion. “Quge-tips is our lighthearted tackle that suggestions, celebrating creativity and reminding everybody that even a basic can nonetheless shock you.”
Humor is the driving drive behind the Quge-tips work, which is anchored in content material that cribs from the daytime infomercial playbook, together with Grownup Swim fixtures like Tim & Eric. Movies open on Neptune, an brisk spokesperson within the Billy Mays mildew, asking “Has this ever occurred to you?” earlier than depicting more and more far-fetched eventualities the place Quge-tips might be of help. The advert additionally alludes to Neptune’s tortured private life as an actress seemingly portraying his estranged spouse tosses her wedding ceremony band right into a mop bucket and declares that she has fallen out of affection. Later, Neptune forlornly notes that “nights are hardest” whereas sitting on the sting of a mattress alongside a Quge-tip in a blonde wig.
Quge-tips’ web site description takes an identical web page from unhinged on-line tradition. The novelty product boasts of being 6 ft tall when it’s really a number of inches shorter, a reference to peak inflation by males on courting apps. The Quge-tips web site additionally carries sold-out items resembling a “Better of Bruce and the Brass Boys” brass-instruments album and the discarded wedding ceremony band from the infomercial. “Really I’m not eliminating this,” the product web page for the latter reads. Quge-tips, which the model teased extensively on its social pages forward of their Dec. 9 debut, are launching in time for the vacation gifting season.
Q-tips has additionally partnered with manufacturers like Doritos and Goodyear to additional prolong its attain. In a video collaboration with Doritos, an everyday cotton swab and one of many PepsiCo model’s chips are blended collectively in water to create large variations of every. Goodyear’s contribution sees the corporate’s signature blimp and tires cleaned by a Quge-tip.
Q-tips kickstarting an even bigger advertising and marketing push follows the sale of dad or mum Elida Magnificence to personal funding agency Yellow Wooden Companions final yr. Unilever beforehand owned the wonder and private care portfolio that additionally contains manufacturers like Noxzema and Brylcreem.
