Marketing Lesson From Buttwipes (No Joke, Literally… Buttwipes!)

You might find this video hilarious.

You might find this video in poor taste (and maybe even offensive).

But whatever you find it, there’s a very serious… and very important marketing lesson everyone should take away from it.

First, watch the video…

DollarShaveClub.com’s first video went viral and has over 11 million views on YouTube since it was posted about a year ago.

This new one for One Wipe Charlies is well on its way with over 1 million views in about 3 months.

But it’s not the viral nature of the video I want to talk about.

There are a few lessons to be learned from it, but the one I want to focus on here is this:

Positioning.

See, plenty of other companies sell a similar product to One Wipe Charlies, but they call them the very sterile sounding “moist wipes” or “baby wipes”. The brands selling them usually include words like “fresh” and “gentle” in the name.

That’s fine if you’re selling to women and babies. But there are few things less manly sounding than buying fresh and gentle moist wipes.

The beauty of this video is how it repositions moist wipes into a product that’s quite manly. Yes, it’s a funny video, but it’s also very smartly done and well thought out. It appeals to men by:

• Calling the product buttwipes instead of moist wipes
• Using crude humor in the video that most husbands will find MUCH funnier than their wives (and will want to share and talk about with their friends)
• Using marines and machine guns

By catering very specifically to their target market, One Wipe Charlies come across as a much more masculine product to use.

How can this apply to your business (the positioning, NOT the machine guns)? Ask yourself these questions…

• What product or service do you sell that could be repositioned to appeal to a new or underserved market?
• What product or service do your competitors sell that you could reposition to appeal to a new or underserved market?

I know guys in the online marketing world who were struggling and decided to focus on one specific market. So, for example, instead of offering SEO and PPC services to all businesses, they just offered their services to law firms.

I know a web designer who changed his business model to just serve Non Profits.

There are accountants who position themselves to just work with doctors or with truck drivers.

And by repositioning their businesses to target a very specific segment of the population, they’ve had much more success.

DollarShaveClub didn’t just go after the buttwipe market because they wanted to make a funny video. They did their research. They saw an underserved market. And they took an existing product and positioned it to appeal to a market the competition is largely ignoring.

You can do the same thing.

Reposition the products/services you and/or your competitors sell so they appeal to a very specific segment of the market. If you do it right, you’ll capture a much higher market share than trying to appeal to everyone.

And, you don’t even have to resort to making crude videos to do it. Though, if you do, be sure to send me the link! 😉