Rubbing my eyes I started reading the advertisement on the jacket of the newspaper. With a thought running at the back of my mind where could that smell possibly come from.

I woke this morning, like any other day to pick up my daily newspaper. Trying to open my eyes and flipping pages of the national daily, The Times of India. I started to wonder if there’s something that got spilled over or I dropped something on my way picking the newspaper and back as I could smell something around me.

Failing to figure where was the smell coming from I flipped over to the page 2 only to realise that the smell was from the newspaper. A print ad had gone beyond visual to olefactory representation. As a  marketer I thought this was a nice & would certainly like to extend my greetings to the Brand Managers at Unilever for that out of the box thinking.

We had seen these promotions connecting with the sensory stimulation of the reader’s a few years ago by Volkswagen. The country was taken by surprise and excitement but that was at a massive marketing budget from the automobile major. However today’s advert was an experiential highlight by the team of marketers and the R&D team at TOI and I am sure a lot economical.

The ad surely did meet the desired objective:

– Catching the attention of the readers

– Surprise the readers

– Make the readers experience what they may expect from the product

– Making World Toilet Day popular

– Reached the TG as most readers do habitually carry the newspaper along while squatting

There may certainly be a section of reader’s who may detest this piece of marketing and might get disgusted. Only reason that they got the smell of their washrooms right inside their living room. But I am sure these will wither from the minds of the reader’s like the smell from the newspaper evaporated after few hours.

I am also 99.9% sure what will stay for a long time is the assurance of Domex kills 99.9% germs in the minds of readers.

PS: In case you read today’s newspaper (TOI) and couldn’t get a whiff of what’s written above, I think there’s a need of a Covid test immediately 😉