Blogging in the Bathroom

Procter & Gamble Co. is looking for five people who will, in return for $10,000, spend five weeks in a Charmin-branded Manhattan bathroom and blog about the experience.

The five “Charmin Embassadors” will work in the Charmin Restrooms in Times Square from November 23 to December 31. Job requirements include interacting with hundreds of thousands of bathroom guests, maintaining their own blogs and content on Charmin-branded websites and popular social-media sites, and sharing family-friendly video from the restroom space and surrounding areas.

This is not the first year Charmin has hosted a temporary, or pop-up, bathroom in Times Square. In 2008, it kicked off a Plush Potties for the People tour that traveled from Santa Monica, California, to Times Square, where it settled for the holidays. Comedian Chelsea Handler, host of Chelsea Lately on the E! network, was on site to launch the tour.

But this is the first time P&G is using online and viral marketing to promote the bathroom, and the first time it is hiring a consumer as a spokesperson.

For this year’s campaign, called Enjoy the Go, Charmin will conduct open auditions November 5 at New York’s Hilton Hotel on 53rd Street and Sixth Avenue. Among questions the candidates will field: Why they “enjoy the go,” and what qualifies them as a Charmin Ambassador. The winners will be announced November 23. For more details, visit EnjoyTheGo.com.

Cincinnati-based P&G is the world’s largest consumer-products company.