Marketing the Unmentionable

When your client sells a product so outrageous that even Maxim refuses to run an ad for it, you’ve got two choices. You can either tone down your marketing, using euphemisms and beating around the bush, as it were—or you can dive into the controversy and embrace the very human functions your product is designed to assist.

In the case of Nutt Butter, a lotion whose name pretty much says it all, RDG opted for strategy #2.

Nutt Butter’s parent company, Tame the Beast, is a Nashville-based maker of men’s grooming products that offer a more grown-up alternative to the overpowering artificial scents and bro culture of many men’s products. The brand has a friendly, fun voice that celebrates manhood while at the same time resisting simplistic gender stereotypes. Using organic, herbal formulations, sophisticated but colorful package design, and messaging about being comfortable in one’s own skin, TTB has found a customer base that spans both the Kinsey spectrum and a fairly wide age range.

With the encouragement of the company’s founder, John Cascarano, our team developed a brand voice for Nutt Butter that embraced the raunchiness of the product’s use without going completely juvenile.

We highlighted “teste-monials” from happy customers.

We juxtaposed Nutt Butter with masterpieces of classical art.

And with the introduction of Nutt Butter Edibles, we took on the taboo many couples feel around “intimate moisturizers.”

Our take: Customers should feel good about buying a product that makes them feel good. Laughing about the “affairs of the flesh” can be a great tool for eliminating awkwardness. But more than anything, “butterers” should feel that they’re taking care of themselves—and each other—when they use Nutt Butter.

Nutt Butter as the ultimate self-care? Maybe it’s just the tension relief the world needs now.