EVERYONE BUYS TOILET PAPER

by Danny Creed | Jun 26, 2026

Several years ago, I came to understand that the act of buying toilet paper was a major lesson in the art of being a good businessperson and a great marketer. Crazy, right! 

The Toilet Paper Lesson, when applied correctly (no pun intended), can totally reset your thinking about critical decisions, sales, and marketing. And it goes like this: “You’ll never be a great businessperson, executive or entrepreneur; you’ll never master marketing or sales until you realize that when you go home, at some point, you’ll need to go buy toilet paper too!”

Translation: We are all consumers, every one of us. So, the lesson is that to be really, really good at business, marketing, and sales, we must remember that we are also consumers. Which, in practice, means that we must learn to critique our business, sales and marketing decisions as a consumer. We must view any marketing materials, advertising copy, or sales scripts from both the expert and the consumer perspectives. 

We make decisions and create materials (or pay someone to create them) with the intent of using them to sell our product or service to prospective consumers. But the difference in a good business decision or good marketing copy and materials that win awards, or decisions that go bust are usually a result of the application of the true “acid” test. 

The “Acid Test” is simply the act of stepping back, putting on your CONSUMER hat, critically looking at the material, and asking yourself, “Would I buy that?”  If you, as the consumer, say NO, then you should accept that it’s not strong enough and go back to the drawing board immediately.  If, upon review, your decision doesn’t make sense, drop the ego and rethink it. If the message is cute or funny but doesn’t really sell your product, admit it and start all over. 

It’s such a simple act, but it’s amazing that few businesspeople, marketers, sales professionals, and the like use this powerful technique. There are some variations on the question that include:

  • “Would I buy that?”  Simply put, do you get the value proposition? Does the offer make the least amount of sense? Be honest!
  • “Does that make sense?” Uh, well, does it make sense? 
  • “So What?” Just look at the answer or your document, and if the words “SO WHAT” come to mind, you need to start over. Read the material a couple of times. If the material makes you laugh, but on the second reading, you find yourself thinking, SO WHAT…then it’s time to work on it again.
  • “WII-FM” (What’s In It for me?)  If you now catch yourself saying SO WHAT, WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME, then you really need to step back and start afresh. Great business decisions to marketing copy or sales material should never leave a doubt about what is being sold and the value to the consumer.

The bottom line is that without these simple checks and balances, you could make some bad decisions simply because you didn’t ask yourself a couple of important questions. You could also waste a ton of budget on ideas that don’t work…and they don’t work because they don’t relate to what the consumer wants.

 And, it all could have been avoided if you remembered that you, too, are a consumer. 

I have to stop writing now….I have to go to the store!