AdsoftheWorld.com highlights another interesting ad campaign, this time for a biodegradable thingymagig that allows women to pee standing up.

Here’s a description of how the campaign worked in practice, seemingly in Canada:

To drive trial where the product was most needed (i.e. dirty public toilets), we reversed the men¹s and women¹s washroom signs at a local bar. Stepping into the washroom, women were met with signage on the floor, over the sink, the urinal and in the stall. With free P-Mate samples mounted on the signs and trial offer coupons printed on nearby toilet paper, it only took a few brave women to spark a chain reaction that spilled out of the washroom, onto the street and into neighboring bars.

You can see from the images of the campaign that it’s quite interesting: women entering a space set aside for men, the injunction to “relax” and the very pink way it was presented. Click through to see more, including one particularly patronising ad (presumably aimed at men(, which reads: “Sorry for the inconvenience, the women are learning to pee”. And the product itself.

I suppose I can see how it would be useful, perhaps when attending a festival. Or a grotty venue. Or in the even grottier loos in train stations. Yet - and maybe this is reading too much into it - do women really need to pee “like men”? Do some of the slogans used in this campaign sort-of imply a bit of literal biological (and social) superiority - “aim high”, for example? As well as the completely needless (if biodegradable) extra waste, isn’t the whole idea a bit redundant, and also indicative of the idea that of course women want to be “like men”, because men are better in every way?

Posted by Jess McCabe on 28 August 2007, at 12:10 PM