We are here today to celebrate the Diaper King of Chicago.
Because His Highness Adam Greenberg went on LinkedIn to share a story about outdoor advertising and adult diapers that was enough to make a billboard for adult diapers an Ad I Wish I’d Made.
It’s solidly executed creative, although not anything revolutionary. It is clever, and it gets all the information out there in a consumable way a lot of outdoor advertisers don’t manage. The most significant part of the ad? The word “diapers.”
The conventional wisdom in the industry would be to think, “Adult people aren’t going to want to talk about ‘diapers,’ because it’s a baby thing, so we’re going to call them ‘briefs.’” Trust the Diaper King — and his openness to listen to the people he serves — to set us straight. Because his customers don’t want to talk about “briefs.” “Briefs” reinforces a stigma. “Briefs” says, “Incontinence is so shameful and unmentionable, we’re going to talk around it and use euphemisms to be all delicate-like.”
But the Adam Greenberg’s customers didn’t want to be treated like delicate little daisies, and they knew the difference between briefs and diapers and what they were putting on their butts every day, and the respectful thing — the thing that would combat the stigma and return to them a degree of dignity — would be to just come out and say, “diaper.” As one customer said, “Doctor told me to stop calling them diapers. I said Dude, I’m the one wearing them. You’re the one being the baby, not me.”
There are ads I Wish I’d Made because the creative is so striking and conceptual and moving, and ads I Wish I’d Made because they looked like they were just plain fun to work on. And there are ads I Wish I’d Made because they really meant a lot, on a personal level, to the people they’re trying to reach. So congratulations to Adam Greenberg for adding adult diapers to that carefully curated celebration of great ads.