Howdy, Marketer! 

Here's a fact that not many marketers know: the most successful viral ad in internet history was made for a plastic stool that helps you poop better. 

Not a sneaker. Not a phone. A toilet stool. 

And the agency behind it didn't get lucky once - they did it again for a toilet spray, a mattress, and a dozen other "nobody wants to talk about this" products. 

That agency is Harmon Brothers. (Not sponsored, just admiration.)

Underneath the absurdity is a brutally disciplined direct-response machine. 

The humor is the wrapper around the main objective: sales.

Agencies that try to copy the "weird viral video" formula miss that second part entirely, and that's exactly why their copycats flop while Harmon Brothers keeps printing money for clients most agencies wouldn't touch.

Some stats: 

YouTube: 11.1K subscribers

Instagram: 14.3K followers

LinkedIn: 8K followers

Facebook: 16.1K followers

Harmon Brothers is a Provo, Utah-based creative agency that makes long-form, story-driven video ads for direct-to-consumer brands. They specifically go after products other agencies consider too boring, too gross, or too hard to sell. 

Are Harmon Brothers ads effective? Well, by 2020, the agency has delivered over 1.4 billion video views, with over $350 million in consequent sales for clients.

Their sweet spot is founder-led, bootstrapped or lightly-funded DTC brands selling a product that's functional, slightly embarrassing, or just plain unsexy - the kind of product a normal ad agency would hand to an intern and hope for the best. 

Harmon Brothers targets mid-stage to late-stage direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands, challenger companies, and innovative product inventors who have a validated physical product with proven product-market fit but have hit a growth ceiling with standard Meta and Google text/image ads. 

Squatty Potty, Poo-Pourri, and FiberFix - none of these are brands you'd want to present at a pitch meeting to look cool. And that's exactly the gap Harmon Brothers has built a business around.

A narrow, weird niche that nobody else wanted to own became their biggest moat.

Harmon Brothers position themselves as the agency that pioneered viral ads by combining  brand storytelling and performance marketing principles.

Their ads entertain people enough to build a memorable brand while using direct-response techniques that encourage viewers to buy.

This blend of storytelling and conversion-focused marketing is what they call the Harmon Brothers style.

There's also a values layer to their positioning. The Harmon Brothers have turned down alcohol sellers before because they do not drink, and they don't believe in swearing either - a reflection of the founders' LDS (Mormon) faith. 

But as co-founder Jeffrey Harmon put it, "There's nothing in my beliefs that says, 'You can't talk about poo.'" (Source) 

This fascinating contradiction strengthens their brand: deeply conservative personal values paired with the most irreverent advertising on the internet.

What makes a Harmon Brothers ad go viral? The core method comes down to these 5 repeatable moves.

First, they immerse themselves in the product before writing a single joke. Creative director Daniel Harmon and his brothers spent months immersing themselves in a product, using it themselves, to come up with a shtick, discussing ideas consistently until one landed. 

It's lived research in the guise of creative exercise. 

Many agencies tend to skip this step and jump straight to "what's a funny concept," which is exactly why the ads feel bolted onto the product instead of grown out of it.

Second, everything is built backwards from the sale instead of forwards from the joke. As Jeffrey Harmon told HuffPost, "We're building the video for the sale... Every line of PooPourri and Squatty Potty is reinforcing the message." 

This is the single most important thing to understand about their work. 

The unicorn isn't there because unicorns are funny. 

It's there because the team asked themselves how to make an approachable, friendly way to talk about the colon at the dinner table, and a rainbow-pooping unicorn solved that exact communication problem. 

Every absurd element is doing direct-response work - building trust, defusing embarrassment, or explaining a mechanism - even while it's making you laugh.

Third, they build the video for the internet's actual viewing behavior. 

They designed their ads to capture attention, meaning the first 5 seconds carry as much narrative weight as the whole rest of the script. 

That's a discipline lifted straight from direct-response copywriting - you have to earn every second of attention, or the viewer is gone. Compare that to a typical brand ad that spends its first 10 seconds on a slow establishing shot. 

Harmon Brothers treats the start as the most expensive real estate in the entire video.

Fourth - and this is the part that separates them from every agency trying to just "go viral" - they test relentlessly and don't believe in luck. 

They cut several variations of any given video and test them with test audiences to see what actually performs before ever putting real ad spend behind a concept. 

Creatives and brands tend to chase the wrong idea, expecting a great video to magically get shared everywhere on its own - that's simply not how it works anymore. 

Fifth - internally, their creative process runs through something they call the Hypo Lab - a weekly meeting where anyone on the team can bring an idea to the table, usually starting with many concepts and narrowing down to 1-2 to actually test. 

That's a genuinely useful structural takeaway for any marketing team: institutionalize a low-stakes idea-generation ritual, separate from the high-stakes production process, so weird ideas get a fair shot before you commit a budget.

Harmon Brothers campaigns are built to work as long-form consideration drivers. 

While traditional digital marketers preach that social ads must be under 15 seconds, Harmon Brothers routinely runs ads that are 3 to 6 minutes long. 

Why? 

Because long-form video builds immense purchase intent. They function as entertaining video sales letters.

A customer who watches 4 minutes of an entertaining demo ad is dramatically more qualified than someone who clicked a 5-second image ad on impulse. 

This leads to higher average order values (AOV), lower return rates, and higher conversion rates on landing pages.

Harmon Brothers proved that direct-response advertising does not have to look cheap, and brand-building video does not have to be unmeasurable.

The core lesson is: stop hiding the awkward or unsexy parts of your product. 

Your customer's secret pain points, embarrassments, and daily annoyances are your greatest marketing assets. 

If you can make people laugh at a problem they thought they had to suffer through alone, and then show them a clear visual proof of how your product fixes it, you might just gain a customer for life.

✌️,

Tom from Marketer Gems