Cottonelle Crooners Boost Sales

Kimberly-Clark boosted Cottonelle toilet tissue’s market share 1.6 percentage points with a family-friendly song contest.

The Cottonelle Tales of Best Friends & Family contest asked consumers to write and perform a song about their family dog to vie for a $200,000 home makeover and a cameo in a Cottonelle print ad in People and Parenting magazines. The effort showcases the brand’s Cottonelle Puppy icon, a yellow Lab that appears in ads in the U.S. and Europe.

The contest ran mid-July through mid-October. The winners, the Nilsson family, spent a day in New York City with Cottonelle spokesperson Florence Henderson to collect their prize. GMR Marketing, New Berlin, WI, handled the contest; Ketchum handled p.r.

The Nilsson family won $200,000 in Cottonelle's song contest

The promo paid off for Cottonelle, too: Its dollar share rose 1.6 percentage points to 17.2% for the 12 weeks ended Sept. 17, per ACNielsen data from Kimberly-Clark.

Cottonelle sales rose 4.3% to $494 million for 52 weeks ended Oct. 2, per Information Resources Inc. IRI pegs its dollar share at 14.6%, second only to Scott’s 15.6% share of the $3.38 billion toilet-tissue category.

The contest garnered nearly 1,000 entries via mail and in-person auditions in six markets. Consumers voted for their fave song at Cottonelle’s Web site Cottonelle.com, with 13,271 unique voters; overall site traffic nearly quintupled to 141,000 visitors per month (from fewer than 30,000).

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