How Clorox used content marketing to help me fix a toilet

How Clorox used content marketing to help me fix a toilet:

At 2 o’clock this morning, Clorox helped me fix a running toilet – and in doing so provided a brilliant lesson on how to build a connected brand through useful and visible content marketing.

I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of running water – a panic-inducing moment as any homeowner can attest. Fortunately I discovered a most mundane but maddening problem: a bathroom toilet that would not stop running.

Unfortunately I am possibly the most incompetent homeowner in the western suburbs of Chicago. I consider loading the dishwasher properly a major achievement in home maintenance. But at two in the morning, so long as I was wide awake, I decided to see if I could get the toilet fixed. And by God, I succeeded! The process was shockingly easy:

1. I Googled “Toilet won’t stop running.”

2. I clicked on the link that appeared at the top of the page: “How to Stop a Running Toilet” on the DIY Network.

3. Since I’m completely incompetent, I did exactly as I was instructed and left nothing to personal improvisation. The site had me onboard at Step 1, “Watch an Overview Video.” The concisely edited video, “brought to you by Clorox,” gave me some ways to diagnose the potential causes of a running toilet within 60 seconds. (In my case, the culprit was a faulty float connection, which I was able to fix easily.)

Within 60 seconds, Clorox built a connected brand with me by being useful. Instead of telling me how great Clorox is – something I did not care to hear at two o’clock in the morning – Clorox built goodwill by sponsoring content that I needed at the right time and place. When I watched the video, I was focused on stopping a problem that was keeping me awake. I found exactly what I needed, and Clorox got what it wanted, which was two brand impressions (the “sponsored by Clorox” messages that appear twice — unobtrusively — in the video voice-over).

And, importantly, Clorox was visible: the video appeared at the top of my search engine results page. Like many multi-tasking and easily distracted consumers, I lacked the energy to do an extensive search. Had the DIY page been buried inside the search results, I might have overlooked information that I needed.

Being useful and visible are two of the five tenets of brand connectedness espoused by iCrossing (the five tenets are as follows: being useful, usable, desirable, visible, and engaging, as discussed in a major iCrossing report, Building a Connected Brand). By helping a consumer in need, Clorox demonstrates how connectedness in action helped me return to a good night’s sleep in the process.

— David Deal, vice president of marketing, iCrossing