The encyclopedia · Marketing & Brand · Product decision · 2024–2025
Microlax built a peer-to-peer toilet booking app where clean loos are scarce
The laxative brand launched BuktuPup, letting travellers rent clean home toilets via WhatsApp; rural sales surged 55% as it owned the toilet moment.
Microlax
the move
In Indonesia, travellers — especially around rural tourist spots — struggle to find hygienic public toilets, and constipation makes the problem worse. Microlax, a trusted laxative brand, wanted to be the name people think of when the need strikes.
Dentsu Creative Indonesia built BuktuPup ('Book-to-Poop'), a peer-to-peer microsite where locals list their clean private restrooms with photos, ratings and reviews; travellers book through WhatsApp, and Google Maps data gives broad coverage.
The network grew to 213 toilets across 27 tourist destinations, creating income for hosts while putting Microlax in front of people at exactly the right moment. Rural Microlax sales surged 55% and website traffic rose 46%.
The work won a Bronze at Spikes Asia 2025 in Brand Experience & Activation for Healthcare, plus three Bronzes at Indonesia's Citra Pariwara, and turned the brand into a service people actually use.
why it works
- A marketplace solves the real problem instead of interrupting people with ads.
- Booking a toilet creates a natural, on-the-spot encounter with the product's benefit.
- Locals earning income from hosting make the platform self-spreading.
what transfers
A product that solves a shameful moment can build the category's infrastructure instead of just advertising: a brand that removes the pain becomes the name people reach for when the pain arrives.
what came after
BuktuPup kept expanding after its pilot and became a reference case for brand-as-service work in Southeast Asia; Microlax positioned itself around making relief easier rather than selling product features.
references
- Dentsu Indonesia and Microlax let travellers Book-to-Poop (press release)
- BuktuPup by Dentsu Indonesia and Microlax solves clean toilet woes for Indonesian tourists
- Spikes Asia winners spotlight (Book to Poop results)
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