Flush: the toilet paper that let you pick which old-growth forest to cut
For eight days, Flush sold toilet paper by the forest it came from. On Earth Day, Cloud Paper revealed the brand was fake and the clear-cutting was real.
A fake toilet paper brand that let you pick which ancient forest to wipe with, so no one would want to.
- Client
- Cloud Paper
- Year
- 2021
- What we did
- Campaign, PR, Production, Website
- Result
- Outrage first, then 'brilliant' once the reveal landed
Cloud Paper makes tree-free bamboo toilet paper and needed Earth Day awareness on a production budget of up to $20k and no media budget. We launched Flush, a parody brand that sold 'Flushparency': choose the Boreal, the Amazon or the Pacific Northwest for your bum. A week later, on Earth Day, we revealed it was fake and the forests were real.
We wipe with old-growth forests, then flush them
Big toilet paper brands clear-cut virgin, old-growth forests so we can wipe once and flush. The softer the paper, the more virgin the wood has to be.
Cloud Paper makes tree-free toilet paper from bamboo, a grass that grows back fast, and ships it to your door. But most people never think about where their roll comes from.
The brief: get millions of people talking about it around Earth Day 2021. We had up to $20,000 for production and $0 for media.
A fake toilet paper brand that let you choose your forest
Make the industry's choice visible by turning it into a product feature. Flush was "the first toilet paper that lets you choose your forest," sold on a promise of total Flushparency.
Pick your forest from a map, from the Boreal to the Amazon. The Four Fresh Forests range included Boreally Plush, Northwestern Lushberjack and Tide Roll, with California Shredwoods coming soon.
We built the whole brand: a website, a launch film, social posts and a Kickstarter-style pre-order page. It went live in April 2021, in the run-up to Earth Day.
Pick a forest
A map of real forests to choose from, Boreal to Amazon.
Four Fresh Forests
Rolls named after the forests they came from, at $34 each.
Back the launch
A Kickstarter-style page asked people to pre-order.
People hated Flush. Then on Earth Day, the site flipped.
People hated Flush. The comments filled with anger and disbelief, and Cloud Paper investor Robert Downey Jr. called it "worst in class."
On Earth Day, April 22, 2021, the site flipped: "We made a fake TP company. But the problem is shockingly real."
Everyone who had come to be outraged was pointed to Cloud Paper's bamboo rolls instead. The anger had been the point all along.
From "worst in class" to "brilliant" in one day
After the reveal the comments turned from anger to applause. Ashton Kutcher, another Cloud Paper investor, called it "brilliant."
KING 5 in Seattle and MediaPost covered the stunt. Pull quotes from Variety and Fast Company joined the wall of reactions.
No view or sales numbers survive in our files. What the comments show is the arc we designed for: outrage first, then the point landing.
We made a fake toilet paper company. But the problem is shockingly real.
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In the news
New client: Cloud Paper wants the world talking about trees and toilet paper
Cloud Paper makes tree-free toilet paper from bamboo. For Earth Day, it asked us for one idea that gets millions of people asking where their roll comes from.
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