By Kristen Fyfe
Culture and Media Institute
June 25, 2007

Buttocks.  Butts.  Rear ends. Posteriors. Moons.  Call them what you will, but soon they’ll be in your face, way bigger than life - and adorned with big smiles. 

On July 1, New Yorkers will have to deal with visual pollution of a new variety: a collection of human derrieres with smiley faces staring down from a gigantic two-story billboard. The tushes will be wrapped around three sides of a building above one of the busiest intersections in New York City - Times Square.  These multi-cultural bottoms are apparently the latest in advertising imagery.  The product?  A “state of the art” toilet.

Really.

The Toto Washlet company has created a toilet that “cleans and dries with aerated water and warm air (both adjustable, via wireless remote, for temperature and strength),” according to a press release cited in Advertising Age.  It continues, “While over 17 million have been sold worldwide, the U.S. remains an untapped market.”

Notice of the “cheeky” ad campaign came from Advertising Age, which featured a picture of the corner on which the giant billboard is wrapped. The very popular Drudge Report Web site linked to the piece, insuring that millions of eyes have now seen the posterior parade.

As a culture and media critic, and a mom, I just have to ask, “why?”  Why do tens of thousands of people have to be shot the moon for a product few will likely buy?  Imagine the conversations parents will be forced into when they bring their children to the McDonalds that is (in)conveniently located under the giant, smiling bottoms.

Billboards are ubiquitous as any driver in America knows.  And they are big business.

According to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America, outdoor advertising brought in $1.6 billion in revenue in the first three months of 2007.  That’s a lot of billboards.

And billboard prices are very much affected by the location of the billboard.  Which makes one wonder just how much all those smiling fannies cost the Toto Washlet company.  Did they make a good investment or did they flush that money down the …. Washlet?  Certainly the decision makers at Toto thought they were making a wise business decision in the design and placement of this expensive billboard.  And it will doubtless generate buzz.  But will it drive sales? 

Sometimes it seems like ad companies create campaigns just to tweak the noses of social conservatives.  Remember the Paris Hilton/Carl’s Jr. ad in which Miss Hilton performed a soft-porn car wash dance while eating a sloppy hamburger?  The Carl’s Jr. folks said the provocative ad would drive sales through the roof.  They were wrong.  There was a significant public outcry and sales slid.

While Times Square in New York City is no bastion of morality, one wonders how many people will lose their appetites for Happy Meals when they have to walk under a host of heinies to buy them.

Kristen Fyfe is senior writer at the Culture and Media Institute, a division of the Media Research Center.