The replica confessional doubled as a porta-potty.
There’s no room for bashfulness when you’re a company that sells personal care products, and irreverent bidet brand Tushy proved as much on June 20 with its Coming Clean Confessional activation in New York City. Leaning into the religious undercurrents often associated with cleansing routines, Tushy installed a mock confessional booth that doubled as a porta-potty to give consumers a test run of its hero product… in the middle of Washington Square Park.
“There have always been some slight religious undertones to cleansing rituals in general, and the bathroom is also a place to kind of let things go,” says Miki Agrawal, co-founder and creative director at Tushy. “The whole idea is that it’s time to come clean, let that go, confess and wash your sins away. It was a fun way to [drive] trial, but then to acknowledge the fact that [using the product] is an opportunity to fully cleanse yourself.”
Consumers who were brave enough to confess their “sins” stepped into the booth to share a dirty secret, and try out the bidet. After coming clean, they were surrounded by audio of a church choir-like “Aaahhh” sound clip. As Agrawal puts it, those who participated in the confessional didn’t get baptized, they got “butt-tized.”
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Naturally, a “priest” with a mic guided the experience from just outside the confessional window, riffing on participants’ admissions and engaging passersby. And since it was Pride Month, the priest was also a cheeky drag queen. A brand ambassador wearing a shirt that read “Ask me about my butthole” was also on-site at a welcome table to answer questions.
“It’s so fun and pushes the boundaries of taboo—talking about religion’s pretty taboo—but it’s playing with the edges of it,” Agrawal says. “Confessing your sins by getting butt-tized, you can play with it, you can have fun.” Amen to that.
Consumers could stop by a table outside the booth to learn more about Tushy.
