Poop Should Never Feel Painful

Truth: Everyone poops. Also true: Sometimes pooping can feel painful — but no brands thought to talk about that, let alone sing about it, until now.  

To grow the Colace business, Avrio Health needed to differentiate and reinvigorate their stool softeners in an outsized way. So, based on the key insight that constipation sufferers experience painful bowel movements, a campaign was created to not only reframe feelings of ‘I can’t go’ to feelings of discomfort when they do go, but to also make an uncomfortable topic something people wanted to talk about. 

Our winning formula — Make TMI cool with a catchy, original song played lovingly on ukulele, paired with disarming illustrations of various analogies for the pain of passing hard stools—analogies that were at once charmingly graphic yet utterly relatable.  Pineapples, porcupines, watermelons... oh my!    

This tune about softening hard, harsh stools was a major strategic shift for Colace Stool Softeners that not only defied category convention, but created a catchy earworm as people sang along, shared, and admitted its relatability. From copy testing to market chatter and sales results, the campaign exceeded expectations as consumers all agreed: #2 should be easy to do for everyone.