You won’t see these ads on the No. 2 train anytime soon, no butts about it.
A bidet company hoping to advertise its wares on the city’s subways had to flush its marketing strategy down the toilet this week after the MTA rejected its cheeky ad campaign.
Tushy, which sells “a modern bidet for people who poop,” proposed print ads depicting men and women on the throne with the slogans “Nothing says I love you like a clean butth*le” and “Consider my hole life changed.”
But the MTA put the skids on their messaging this week, citing its policy against ads “that contain profanity or slang terms for the genitals or anus.”
“The MTA, after careful review, has determined not to accept Tushy LLC’s proposed ad campaign on the grounds that it is ‘directly adverse to the commercial, administrative or operational interests of the MTA as a business,’” MTA Chief Development Officer John Lieber wrote in a Dec. 3 rejection letter to Outfront Media, a contractor that handles the MTA’s subway ads.
Tushy executives said Wednesday that Outfront approved the text of the ads in October, when they were scheduled to run, but that the MTA walked back approval after seeing the photos because they view it as pushing a “sexually oriented business.”
Now, Tushy top dogs say something about the agency’s reasoning doesn’t pass the smell test.
CEO Jason Ojalvo said part of the company’s mission with its $69 bidet is to reduce the millions of trees cut down each year to feed America’s toilet paper habit. To reject its ads while allowing what he described as more sexually suggestive ads from the Museum of Sex and grooming company forhims.com is hypocrisy.
“We’re up against the toilet paper industrial complex,” he said.
Tushy founder Miki Agrawal also argued that the MTA, which is struggling to clean up its own act, should be more receptive to a message that promotes hygiene and cleanliness.
“We’re turning people on to a much better way of living that the rest of the world has picked up on,” said Agrawal. “To be rejected as a sexual product just does not compute. It’s bullsh-t. We’re calling bullsh-t on it.”
The MTA maintains her claims simply don’t wash and pointed to its advertising guidelines as proof.
“This campaign was rejected for not meeting the MTA’s advertising standards, which have been carefully tailored to balance First Amendment considerations and our riders’ right to not be subjected to messages that, among other things, contain profanity or certain slang terms,” MTA spokesman Shams Tarek said.
Agrawal is no stranger to conflict with the agency. She engaged in a blood feud of sorts with the authority over whether an ad for period-absorbent panties, Thinx, could go on city subways. The ads, which featured a raw egg and grapefruit to depict menstruation, ultimately ran.
Agrawal stepped down as a leader at Thinx after employees charged she touched coworkers’ breasts and FaceTimed from the toilet — allegations she’s denied.
On Wednesday, she argued that — as it did with the Thinx ads — the MTA should reconsider.
“It’s like Purell,” she said of her bidets. “But it’s for your butt.”
