Smelly gas station toilet makeover wins over Thai patrons

When nature calls, Ad Nut hears all the wonderful forest sounds in the neighbourhood.

When 'nature calls' for humans, however, they refer to their need to go to the bathroom, which can become an urgent matter whereby proximity and convenience trumps comfort. Such 'calls' can prompt people to venture into dirty and foul-smelling public toilets, the likes of which one might find at a public gas station, for as little time as possible to get the job done. 

With that in mind, the folks at Yell Advertising in Bangkok decided to create a pleasant surprise for those responding to nature's call at one such gas station toilet as part of a campaign for disinfectant brand Zoflora.

As a newcomer brand, Zoflora had an uphill battle to break into a market saturated by leading brands like Dettol and Magiclean, which similarly claimed to eliminate 99.9% of bacteria, Yell says. Zoflora chose to differentiate itself through its patented scent that could help turn the smelliest of rooms into pleasant fragrant-smelling spaces for up to 24 hours, it claims.

With that in mind, the team at Yell transformed a smelly public gas station toilet into not just a clean and fragrant one, but a full luxury hotel toilet experience, which as you can see from the video below, took the majority of patrons off guard. Rather than exiting as quickly as possible, patrons chose to linger, spending 80% more time in the washroom than prior to the makeover.

More important for Zoflora, however, were the results which included a "considerable" rise in sales, according to the agency, which alslo shared that within three days of releasing the video it received:

• 1 million organic views
• 200x more shares and 100x more comments compared to the original launch from official brand page
• Hundreds of product inquiries on the video
• Heightened brand awareness across all key demos.

No word yet on how long the gas station's luxury fixture will last or who's in charge of dusting the lamps and watering the flowers. 

Full screen video can be found here if not displaying properly below.