harried young mother rushes through Times Square in New York, loaded down with shopping bags and dragging two kids behind her. One of them tugs urgently at her arm. “Mommy, I have to go to the bathroom. Now!”

As the child hops up and down, the mother nears panic. Suddenly, she spots a giant blue billboard with the Charmin bath tissue logo that reads, “You’re in New York … Go in Style!” An oversized arrow points her in the direction of a bathroom. Relief is in sight.

In New York, public restrooms are like the Loch Ness Monster — rumored to exist, but impossible to locate. That changed last winter when Procter & Gamble Co. created a Charmin “pop-up restroom” in the heart of Times Square during the busy holiday season.

From Nov. 20, through Dec. 31, 2006, the Charmin NYC Restroom Experience offered a public potty unlike any other: 20 bathrooms that were both immaculate (they were cleaned after every use) and homey (each one was outfitted with hardwood floors, bead-board wainscoting, porcelain toilets, pedestal sinks, sconces, and even aromatherapy).

If it sounds inviting enough to encourage idling, well, that was intentional. In fact, the average family visit lasted 22 minutes — an impressive amount of time for consumers to interact with any brand, but especially one whose product normally doesn’t garner much thought.

As the category leader in bath tissue, Procter & Gamble didn’t need to introduce people to Charmin or even to publicize a new product, nor did it set out specifically to boost sales with its NYC Restroom Experience (although a post-event uptick was anticipated). Rather, the objectives were to take the commodity out of bath tissue by bringing the brand to life, to surprise and delight consumers, and to engage them at the point of use — all while generating a hoped-for 200 million media impressions.

“We believe that we have a great product, and the best way to communicate that is to get it in people’s hands,” says Adam Lisook, assistant brand manager for Charmin.

That’s hardly a problem when your product is toilet paper. After all, everybody uses it. But its very status as a household necessity is in fact a marketing challenge even for a major brand like Charmin. The reason? “Bath tissue is a low-involvement item,” Lisook admits. “People don’t think about it much when they’re in the supermarket aisle.”

If consumers aren’t giving much thought to what brand of toilet paper they’re buying at the point of purchase, then it’s crucial to reach them someplace else. And there’s no better place (or time) to reach them than at their time of need.

If people don’t think about toilet paper much, they also don’t think about public bathrooms much — that is, until they need one. And can’t find one. Or find one that’s so unpleasant that they would rather not use it. So providing public restrooms that alleviated the “eeewww” factor guided the strategy behind Charmin’s event.

“Any time that you surprise and delight consumers, you build a stronger emotional connection [with the] brand,” Lisook says. “And if we can get them to see Charmin as a brand that understands their needs, then it’s a win for us and for the consumer. The Charmin Restroom was a statement that we understand our consumers and value what they need, which in this case was clean, comfortable restrooms in the middle of Times Square.”

A far cry from the cringe-worthy accommodations of most public restrooms, Gigunda Group Inc., the Manchester, NH,-based experiential marketing agency Procter & Gamble hired to develop the event, created the Charmin facilities with comfort in mind.

As visitors entered the Broadway facility, brand ambassadors dressed in blue letterman-style jackets, blue-and-white striped scarves, and mittens that looked like bear paws welcomed guests and directed them up an escalator. Inside, guests encountered plush blue carpeting and framed portraits of the Charmin bears before reaching a welcome desk and a Flush-O-Meter chart that tracked visitors’ hometowns.

Strollers could be checked with a stroller valet before guests entered the line for the loos (which, of course, were stocked with plenty of Charmin).

In addition to the residential-style restrooms, a handful of special New York–themed stalls were created, too. A Wall Street stall included a working stock ticker that scrolled Charmin messages; and a Broadway stall was decorated like a theater dressing room and featured autographed pictures of event spokeswoman Doris Roberts (who played Marie on the television show, “Everybody Loves Raymond”). There were even two stalls dedicated to “Lil’ Squirt Emergencies.”

The restrooms were just part of the attendee experience. More than 20 flat-screen television monitors played an instructional Potty Dance video, and a dance floor with laser lights and a disco ball provided a place to practice. Visitors could pose for pictures with a giant stuffed Charmin bear riding on a toboggan. And guests who were finished with the facilities (or just pooped out from holiday shopping) could rest in a lounge filled with white couches and a working fireplace.

On their way out, visitors were handed NYC maps and a Charmin extender (to accommodate the Charmin MegaRoll). Once at home, they could log on to CharminRestrooms.com to provide feedback, access their photos, and check the Flush-O-Meter.

Bringing a better potty to the people wasn’t a new concept for Charmin. In 2000 the brand worked with Gigunda Group Inc. on a sampling event for Charmin Ultra. Brand executives were looking to create an event that would connect with customers at the point of use in a relevant way. The result was the “Red Cross of Restrooms” — a concept that involved rejuvenating and “Charminizing” one of the public facilities at the Ohio State Fair (Procter & Gamble is headquartered in Cincinnati). Based on the strength of that test program, the concept was expanded to 15 state fairs the following year. And in 2002, Gigunda and Charmin took the restroom rejuvenation project on the road, building a mobile restroom called the Pottypalooza on a 53-foot tractor-trailer that toured the country year-round.

“The Charmin NYC Restroom Experience is really an evolution of the Red Cross of Restrooms strategy,” says Tim Collins, senior account executive at Gigunda. From the very beginning, Collins says, the marketing company envisioned building bathrooms in Times Square, but felt it was necessary to prove the concept in smaller locales first. “The brand executives were excited about the potential and where this kind of platform could go,” he says, “but it was critical to test and build and have results to interpret in order to determine when, where, and how to deploy the strategy.”

At Procter & Gamble, that kind of creative-yet-analytical thinking is key to enhancing customer appreciation of its products — Charmin included. “We have always prided ourselves on being innovative, and marketing innovation is no different than product innovation,” Lisook says. “We will always do advertising. But this kind of event can directly interface with hundreds of thousands of consumers, and bring an element of understanding as to what it is they need.”

While Charmin didn’t link sales of its bathroom tissue to the event as a measure of its success, it did track two other important metrics: media impressions and number of consumers reached. Both exceeded company goals. In addition to nearly reaching its goal of 200 million media impressions after the first day of the NYC Restroom Experience, Charmin ultimately calculated more than 460 million impressions, including exposure in every major domestic newspaper, including The New York Times (which referred to it as “The Disneyland of restrooms”), and air time on nationally-broadcast morning television programs including “Good Morning America,” “The Today Show,” “The Early Show,” and “Fox & Friends.”

Retailers got in on the event too: According to Collins, Duane Reade, a major drugstore chain in New York, created a companion Charmin Restroom campaign in its stores that included coupons, end-cap displays, and free hourly ad time on its Times Square billboard.

All told, more than 400,000 families from all 50 states and more than 110 countries visited the luxury Charmin bathrooms. Sheron Bates, director of experiential marketing for Archer/Malmo in Memphis, TN, and a two-time visitor to the event, was impressed. “The Charmin event was a true testament of a successful event, as it reflected the brand in a positive manner, was memorable and relevant to its audience, and allowed participants to interact with the brand on various levels,” she says.

Further proof that the event made a lasting impression on consumers came from an entirely unexpected source: YouTube. More than 400 videos of the experience were posted on the site by event visitors — a number that stunned Lisook. “Consumers were so enthralled they felt the need to put up a video of their experience,” he says. “That’s fantastic, and certainly not something we anticipated.”

Given those substantial metrics, the event “far surpassed our expectations,” Lisook says. Yet it was another gauge of the event’s success that made a truly lasting impression: “A lot of the measurement came from the smiles on the faces of people coming down the escalator,” he says. “As people came out, we got the sense that we were right — that we did understand what people wanted. And as marketers, that’s our job.” e