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This doesn’t stink: A robot vacuum cleaner so smart that it avoids solid pet waste. It’s one of several new features on the newest Roomba, which revolutionized the home-cleaning category in 2002 with its first-generation self-moving, floor cleaning robot vacuum.
The newest version—which is called the Roomba j7+ and debuted in September—is packed with high-tech features. It learns how to navigate floors, even remembering certain furniture so that it can get to the dirtiest parts of the house. But instead of marketing the technical aspects of how the Roomba gets the job done, the brand’s newest campaign takes a whimsical approach. Ads from Forsman & Bodenfors NY give the Roomba its own voice and personality in an attempt to portray the high-tech device as a member of the family.
Kiran Smith, chief marketing officer at brand owner iRobot, described the approach on the latest edition of Ad Age’s Marketer’s Brief podcast, saying the humorous tone marks a departure for Roomba.
“If you look at the brand love that people have for Roomba, for iRobot, it’s extraordinary—and yet what we weren’t doing was tapping into that ‘humanness’ of our brand and the fun people were having with it,” she said. “They name their robot, the robot is a part of their family, they take videos obsessively, and yet as a brand, we weren’t not tapping into that. And there was, for me, such a great opportunity to do more storytelling.”One ad shows the Roomba commenting quite nervously as it avoids a child’s toy under a couch.
Such navigation skills are enabled by a front-facing camera that allows the Roomba to navigate around hazards like extension cords, sneakers and yes, Fido’s poop—a mess better left handled by the dexterity of a human’s touch. Roomba backs that feature with the Pet Owner Official Promise (P.O.O.P.), under which iRobot pledges to replace any Roomba j7+ that doesn’t avoid solid pet waste.
The feature is plugged in an ad in which a bulldog looks on as the Roomba “avoids important business, like your dogs.”
On the podcast, Smith also discusses why iRobot has taken more of its media buying and planning in-house. (It still uses an external media agency, Digitas, for some duties.)
“What that allowed us to do is change how we go to market in terms of our media buy, allowing us to have much more flexibility throughout the year… and being able to do the analytics ourselves in terms of what is working, what is not, where do we want to invest more,” Smith says.
Smith, who joined iRobot in 2020, has spent most of her career on the client side, including at Stride Rite and Brookstone. She took a brief detour into the agency world while serving as CEO of Arnold Worldwide for about 18 months ending in late 2019.
“Being on that side of the coin was probably one of the best learning experiences I have ever had,” she said. “I will never look at the client-agency relationship the same way. When are [agencies] most productive and when are they a deterrent? I think I learned a lot from that.” But she added, “I like being on this side of the coin.”
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