Green Products
The Toilet on the Today Show
(Or, How To Spoil a Client)
Effective Green products have their own story to tell. But without good visuals, whether its captivating b-roll and or an enthusiastic, telegenic spokesperson, chances of being featured on a national morning television show like the Today show are pretty low. But a new product at the time, ToiletStone, made it to Today, and the backstory should probably be a textbook PR example on how a little quick-thinking, resourcefulness and grungy porcelain secured a big hit for the client, EarthStone.
Before its product line was sold several years ago, EarthStone made green cleaning stones from crushed and compacted recycled glass that is highly heated into pumice-like cleaning bricks and sold at major retailers and online. One of its more visible products used to clean grills, GrillStone, had already been featured on Today a year or so earlier, thanks to the pitch made by Media Savant to one of the show’s regular contributors, the effusive Stephen Greenburg, whose thing was featuring cool consumer products and gadgets.
Greenberg loved ToiletStone for all its green cleaning properties including its ability to remove hard water mineral stains – without the use of harmful chemicals. One hitch – the show’s producers insisted on a toilet – a somewhat grungy-looking toilet -- to do a demonstration on air for Today’s Spring Cleaning segment (the last item in the video). And they needed it in three days!
How do you find a funky toilet and get it to midtown Manhattan and Rockefeller Center (aka 30 Rock) on time, where the program is produced live every weekday?
You call a friend in Brooklyn who goes looking for the blighted prize at three different salvage places.
She texts you back 4 photos of toilet candidates in various degree of “Yuk!”
You pick one that’s not too gross but not too clean either and she buys it onsite at the salvage place.
She hails a cab and drives with the kinda putrid Porcelain Throne to the Rockefeller Plaza and travel with it in the service elevator with written instructions for the show’s producer (she also would travel back to the location, pick it up and drive it back to the salvage place and drop it off, gratis.)
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
Was the client thrilled? Does a bear … never mind.
TWO HITS ON TODAY!“That just doesn’t happen, I had to remind the EarthStone team. “Lightning rarely strikes twice in the same place.”
But when it does like this in PRland, you will have spoiled your client in ways you could never imagine.