NEW YORK: Heads up, Saturday Night Live cast members, you are about to get a bidet delivery from Tushy.
SNL Weekend Update co-anchor Michael Che proclaimed his love last Saturday for bidets and how "life-changing" they are. As part of his rant, he name-dropped Tushy, which sells "a modern bidet for people who poop," so the brand wants to show SNL its appreciation for the mention that went on for nearly three minutes.
A New York Daily News story, published two days earlier, inspired Che’s monologue. The outlet reported that the MTA rejected Tushy’s proposed print ads depicting men and women on the toilet with the slogans, "Nothing says I love you like a clean butth*le" and "Consider my hole life changed."
MTA said it has a policy against ads "that contain profanity or slang terms for the genitals or anus."
When Colin Jost, Che’s co-anchor on Weekend Update, asked him if he thought the ads should be allowed on the subway, Che said they should be the only ads on the subway.
"You know how miserable the subway is - that's where people need a little splash of hope the most," Che said. "What better metaphor for a bidet than a whooshing train zipping through a dirty tunnel?"
"Glorious" is how he described the experience of using a bidet.
"Food tastes better, I can jump higher, I want children now," Che said. "I’m a better person."
Tushy did not pay for the glowing review. The mention actually came as a total surprise, said Tushy CEO Jason Ojalvo. Two of his staffers were watching the show and alerted him to the mention.
"We are sending bidets to SNL to the cast and writers with the [message]: ‘One of your cast members is a huge evangelist for bidets, see what all the fuss is about, here is your own bidet,’" said Ojalvo.
The Tushy team’s initial reaction to the mention was appreciation. Especially since it wasn’t just a bunch of jokes about bidets, Ojalvo said. Che actually hit a lot of Tushy’s talking points, such as bidets being environmentally friendly.
"Even when Colin Jost said, ‘You could just use wet wipes [instead of bidets],’ [Che] said, ‘But those are terrible for the environment,’" said Ojalvo. "[Che’s bidet speech] came from a place of true love and appreciation for our product."
PR firm Stanton & Company is handling media relations for Tushy. Ojalvo personally secured the New York Daily News story because he knows a writer there, but the PR firm has since been amplifying the story and the SNL mention by reaching out to local New York outlets and national press such as Cosmopolitan.
Aside from SNL, the New York Daily News story was also linked to in TheSkimm’s Quote of the Day in its Friday newsletter. HuffPost and Vulture also covered Che’s love of bidets, and ATTN: created a video about why "bidets are better for your bum" that promoted Tushy on Tuesday. That has been seen 943,000 times.
A video of Che's bidet segment posted to SNL's YouTube page has garnered 602,000 views and 400 comments. Tushy has been responding to some of the comments and posting a link to the New York Daily News story. The brand has also posted the YouTube link to its Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook pages.
Tushy saw a 151% lift in sales on Sunday, compared with the previous Sunday, from all the publicity.
Ojalvo said he did not know how much money three minutes of advertising would cost on SNL, but added that "is not money [Tushy] would have ever spent," noting the company is very frugal.
"We were going to spend a bunch of money on the subway, but ended up spending nothing and ended up with 10-times the impact, if not more," he said. "We are psyched about it."
Ojalvo added that Tushy didn’t try to cause controversy with its MTA ads. "We sent the MTA arguably one of the tamest ads we ever created," he explained. "We went into it like, ‘Wow, we are really playing it safe here,’ and still got shut out."
Tushy would still love to advertise with the MTA, he said. However, the chances are slim that New York City commuters will see its ads. Ojalvo said future print spots will be funnier and even more shocking.
"Every other public transportation marketing company has come out of the woodwork to our marketing team and said, ‘New York wouldn’t run it in the subway, but we will,’" he said. "So we are considering that."
