So Those Whoopi Goldberg Pants-Peeing Commercials…

Whoopi Goldberg‘s recent commercials for Poise Pads, in which she impersonates famous women in history who pee a little in their pants all day, are just the first trickle in a flood of new incontinence products. (Ssssssssssss.)

So this (or a commercial almost exactly like it) aired last night before the Oscars:

Whoopi has been shilling for Poise as a variety of different historical and fictional characters with incontinence for a month or so, now, but the pre-Oscar ad was the most visible so far. Poise has clearly decided to abandon the discreet, abstract route and just come out and say “Hey, everybody of a certain age pees in their pants, buy this and get over it.” And with the baby boomers aging into the underwear “spritzing” demographic, expect a lot more TMI on your TV. Brand Week today reports that all the big guys in incontinence-wear (Depends and Tena, in addition to Poise) are about to roll out campaigns that try to take at least some of the embarrassment out of having to buy diapers for yourself over fifty years after you learned to go pee-pee in the potty like a big boy or girl:

“K-C and Tena aim to reduce some of the embarrassment experienced by consumers by approaching it from a “normal” light. Depend, which rolled out gender-specific underwear last year, said the latest improvement to its line is intended to take away the “clinical” look behind the product, which, historically, resembled a “white diaper,” K-C’s Boulden said.

“When we launched the gender-specific [underwear] last year, that was a huge improvement, but there was still the undeniable fact that this category carries a lot of stigma for the condition,” Boulden said. “Just putting [the product] in the shopping cart tells the incontinence story.”

Tena, meanwhile, will promote its new, Ultra Thins with 15-second product tags at the end of existing commercials for its “Evolution to Bladder Protection” campaign. Those ads, by Zig, Toronto, began last August and showed a woman changing through different garments to symbolize the progression of time (and how bladder protection products, too, have changed).”

Yeah, that’s not going to work. The new grown-up nappies may sell, but putting [the product] in the shopping cart is always going to “tell the incontinence story,” and baby boomers might want to just learn how to run the computer so they can buy their embarrassing products on drugstore.com. The commercials, however, should be fun.

Adult Incontinence Category Is Booming [BrandWeek]