As part of its “Respect the Roll” campaign promoting its Cottonelle Clean Care Toilet Paper, Kimberly-Clark commissioned designer Jonathan Adler to produce limited-edition toilet-paper roll covers. “Consumers shop on autopilot and shop quite a bit on deal,” Kurt Simon, brand director for Cottonelle, told The Washington Post in a recent article on Adler’s, well, role in the campaign. “They tune out when they go into the aisle. And, largely speaking, they tune out (toilet paper) advertising as well.”
The campaign, produced by Chicago agency Tris3ect, comprises TV spots and print—including this ad shot by Jim Fiscus:
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Photo by Jim Fiscus for Cottonelle and Tris3ct. Jim and his team built and lit the set in one day in a Manhattan photo studio.
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Jim turned the job around in two days, working at Drive In Studios in New York. The idea was to photograph a woman in her dressing room, holding one of Adler’s roll covers. But in Manhattan, land of tiny apartments, any residence with an actual dressing room would be way too fancy looking to be appropriate for the character, who was meant to be stylish but relatable. So Jim’s crew built a set at Drive In that would tell the character’s story in a glance and include the necessary spaces for ad copy.
“They wanted to show a working woman who’s up to speed and a dressing room that wasn’t too decked out,” Jim explains. “It needed to be neat and orderly, with the bathroom visible in the background.”
After building and lighting the set the first day, Jim and his team returned the next and shot the ad—and left that night to catch a flight to Budapest to shoot a campaign for Showtime. It was a whirlwind schedule, but it all came off smoothly because Tris3ect had organized every bit of logistics, down to the last detail.
“These guys scheduled everything,” says Jim, who had never worked with the agency before. “They had it so together.”
Here are the full credits for the print campaign:
Client/brand: Kimberly-Clark / Cottonelle Clean Care Toilet Paper
Photographer: Jim Fiscus
Client senior brand manager: John Stanwood
Agency: Tris3ct
Chief creative officer: Paul Kuzma
VP, creative director: Mel Routhier
ACD, copy: Cassidy Fletcher
ACD, art: Sarah Gleason
Agency producer: Jennifer Pecorella
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