Taboo Categories, Like Pooping, Inspire Tushy Founder to Innovate

You've heard of experiential marketing ... but what if you add the theme of mystery? A play on the human instinct to solve problems is just what makes bidet and toiletries company Tushy a creative disruptor, not only in their unique category but the entire industry. Pull up your Marketing 101 books, and flush them down the toilet as we chat with Miki Agrawal, Tushy founder about how to elevate your marketing with creativity, humor and spectacle. Check out how Miki and the Tushy team are creating the "Bellagio Fountain” of Tushy bidets, why they rented one of NYC's biggest churches for a tree's funeral, had adult actress Asa Akira at their Butt-Con event and why all marketers need to add more mystery into their campaigns. Yes, you read that entire paragraph right—you're in for a ride. Adweek: How did you get to where you are today? Any noteworthy aha-moments along the way? MA: Growing up in a very multicultural world, with a Japanese mother and an Indian father in French Montreal, exposed me to multiple perspectives at an early age. It lent itself to looking at ideas and the way things are done, differently. Questioning philosophy showed up in my entrepreneurial career as I looked to enter categories that have been “set for a long time” with little to no innovation, like the period and poop spaces. These categories were “taboo” and since nobody was talking about these topics out loud, nobody was innovating in them, either. Yet, every single being poops and every female has a period! I knew that I could harness creativity and innovation and disrupt tired old categories that sorely needed elevating. https://twitter.com/hellotushy/status/1432385900730802182 What's the most innovative thing you recently worked on? Creating a unique, innovative campaign to showcase the launch of our newest product, our Tushy Ace. The Tushy Ace is the a beautifully designed electric bidet seat, [competitively priced] versus comparable multi-thousand-dollar Japanese bidets. I’ve had this idea to create the “Bellagio Fountain” of Tushy bidets, where we line up Tushy bidets on toilets side by side and rig up the system so that when we play a symphony, we can play the bidets like fountains, spraying in an exact match to the sound. It will create a light and sound fountain show with Tushy Ace bidets. To me, that’s innovative! A product is only good if people know about it and are trying itMiki Agrawal, Tushy What new or up-and-coming innovation(s) are you most excited about and how do you think it will change the future of marketing? I want Tushy to become the OK Go of DTC brands, where we put out wild and inventive videos that are highly shareable, bringing people into our world and into the top of the funnel. We are taking bigger creative risks as our company grows, and that feels really good. Our team has the philosophy that the bigger we get, the bigger the splash of weirdness we can make and the more we “go where we/people/brands haven’t gone before.” Our Tushy Ace launch will include a mystery package with a deck of original cards sent to the press before announcing what it is. We are instructing the press to pull out the royal flushes from the deck, finding the letters to unscramble riddles. Then, the press contacts who solve the riddles will send in the answers to us and we will reveal to them our Tushy Ace! A product is only good if people know about it and are trying it. On going the extra mile with mystery packages and riddles: it’s human nature to want to solve things. Experiential mystery will become a big part of the future of marketing. My mother always talked to me about how to maintain healthy thriving relationships. She touted, “Always keep a little mystery.” I believe mystery keeps people curious, on their toes and slightly turned on, which is where everyone wants to be. View this post on Instagram A post shared by TUSHY Bidet (@hellotushy) What’s one piece of work from your career that you’re the proudest of? To name a few: Wild (my NYC-based gluten-free pizza concept), where I created a History of Pizza class with team competition and games. At the time, for a restaurant to put on a spectacle like this every week was innovative. At THINX, it was our show-stopping subway campaign with our halved grapefruit (resembling a vagina) and a dripping egg yolk plastered all over NYC subways. So many brands still look at our campaign as inspiration. At Tushy, I remain proud of two experiential events that we put on: Funeral For a Tree was an actual funeral that we held for a dead tree. We rented out one of the biggest churches in NYC, Judson Memorial Church in Washington Square Park, and had a 25-part choir perform. An attendee said, “It felt like a full on Broadway Show. It didn’t feel like a company brand activation for one second, and yet, everyone left loving Tushy for putting something this elaborate and soulful on.”Butt-Con was an activation that drew every single major press outlet to the sold-out event, and it featured everything butt-related. We had butt workout trainer to the stars, top and functional medicine doctor Mark Hyman talking about the gut and poop, the top anal porn star Asa Akira there, and more. 50 top press outlets showed up to see what it was about and reported on it. Butt-con was a major viral moment for Tushy. For my books, I think my best work was for my second book, Disrupt-Her. It was the weird video poem I made for it, where I emerged from a bleeding vagina, that I love the most. I’m most proud of the non-stopness of creativity flowing out of our company and the collective minds that dare to keep creating. Was there ever a time where you questioned your career path? How did you handle that? I certainly questioned if my ideas were going to pan out, but I never questioned being a creative entrepreneur. I knew I was unemployable and knew that the only place for me was to do my own thing. By not giving myself a choice, it helped me to just keep going in that direction, figuring things out day by day. What is one skill that you think is currently underdeveloped in marketing? Dialing up the mystery piece is what’s missing in marketing. I think marketing feels like it must be literal and obvious sometimes. However, I think there is a lot of room for creating mystery through marketing, which draws on people’s curiosity and thus, to the brand. How do you pick and develop the talent on your team? Every single person who joins our team does a “Challenge.” We give them data sets and ask them to analyze and offer marketing ideas. We see how they actually think, not how they perform in an interview. We’ve learned a while ago that people can be really impressive in interviews, but when it comes to actually doing the work, some don’t match up to what they’re saying. This process saves us a lot of headaches over time and welcomes a different dynamic to the hiring process. https://twitter.com/hellotushy/status/1428446986588536833 What’s the first post to come to mind when you hear “best-in-class social”? The Kony 2012 campaign. It was the most prolific social campaign I can remember. The way they got viewers of their incredible video to share it with top celebrities to turn it into the most viral video of all time, was truly revolutionary. I will always look to that campaign for inspiration. What’s the best advice you’ve ever received? You are the average of the five closest friends you keep. Choose your people wisely. What one question would you ask the marketing community and why? What is the most creative, experiential inbound marketing idea you have ever come up with? Marketing Innovators Share Which Brand’s Post Is ‘Best-in-Class’

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Taboo Categories, Like Pooping, Inspire Tushy Founder to Innovate

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