Using Sex Appeal to Market a Floor Cleaner?

Talk about elevating an everyday consumer product to another level. In a new television commercial for Pine-Sol cleaner shot in an over-the-top film noir style, Diane Amos, who has starred in the brand’s ads for 16 years, drives along the Pacific Coast Highway in California in the moonlight, and when she reaches an opulent home, a door opens to reveal a shirtless hunk mopping the floor. The spot closes with Ms. Amos sprawled on a bed strewn with rose petals and bottles of Pine-Sol as the man mops beside her. “That’s the power of Pine-Sol, baby.”

Invented in 1929 by Harry A. Cole, a chemist in Jackson, Miss., an area rich with pine forests, Pine-Sol was purchased by the Clorox Company in 1990. Now available in six scents other than pine, Pine-Sol had sales of $59.2 million in the 52 weeks ended Oct. 4, making it just barely the best-selling general cleaner over Lysol, a Reckitt Benckiser brand, with $58.5 million, according to Information Resources, a market research firm whose totals do not include Wal-Mart.