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Renova
The sexiest toilet paper in the world
Renova is on mission to brighten up your life. Why is toilet paper white? The Portugeuse brand a hit in Hollywood bathrooms with its black paper. Colour is a bold, but simple way to change the game.
Renova makes toilet paper. Colourful and sexy, not white and boring. As CEO Paulo Pereira da Silva says “We think that Renova is the living proof that no product is too dull or commoditized to be reinvented and no product is too stigmatized to be loved.
People now create emotional relations with our products whereas before it was all rational.”
The Portugeuse brand, founded in 1818 as a paper maker, first came to attention by adding micro dropleys of smoothing cream to its toilet paper called Fresh & Clean. However its 2002 ad campaign that introduced sex appeal to toilet paper, with Francius Rousseau’s black and white photography, really grabbed attention from Hollywood to Japan. Renova Black Toilet Tissue soon followed, and then other colours. “With this product and the subsequent range we pushed the borders of what toilet paper was all about in order to establish a new design icon that is loved and talked about”
Other colours followed. Red is said to be the favourite of Beyonce. As did extensions into napkins, kitchen rolls, wet wipes and writing paper.
Yet bathrooms remained the priority with ads proclaiming “The Sexiest WC on Earth”. Toilets are one of the most intimate, personal spaces, yet they appear sterile and bland. “We are not afraid of being different and of following what we believe in. We try to be very careful with the aesthetics of everything we produce as we like aesthetics in simple things.
Pivot points for Renova in “changing the game” of toilet paper were:
- Think: Audacious to think differently, to break the rules, and be different
- Disrupt: Reframing their market space, from tissue paper to “sexy bathrooms”
- Design: Embracing functional and aesthetic design, bold and surprising
- Resonate: Connecting with consumers through celebrity endorsement and PR.
“We seek to bring a shining light into a heavily under-glamorized, over-homogenized and even stigmatized category. Every day we work to make people´s day better even if in a very small way. Why not? Why be normal?” says da Silva.