I remember the first time I saw the commercial for Boudreaux’s Butt Paste.
It was during an LSU football game I was watching on television and at first I thought it was a joke.
Now, that joke unique only to Louisiana, is a national competitor for diaper cream companies.
Not only does Boudreaux’s Butt Paste work on cranky babies with rashes on their bums, it has other “adult” uses.
I was sitting around a local Baton Rouge apartment with friends, discussing our upcoming deep sea fishing trip to Grand Isle for Spring Break and Butt Paste enters into the conversation.
“My dad never goes fishing without the Butt Paste,” one aspiring fisherman remarked. “It works really well to prevent the red ass when you’re in that boat bouncing up and down all day.”
But behind the mockery and local Boudreaux-Thibodeaux jokes, George Boudreaux, who owns a family pharmacy in Covington, La., has hit it big with his satisfied baby on the cover of his product.
According to the Baton Rouge Business Report, the Oprah! show
recently featured Boudreaux among others in a bit about successful entrepreneurs.
The product, manufactured by Dr. G.H. Tichenor Antiseptic
Co. of New Orleans, is now in competition with big manufacturers including Desitin, Aveeno and Johnson’s.
Louisiana’s finest ointment can now be found in 3,300 Wal-Mart stores and 1,250 Target stores as well as many other independent drug stores around the country.
Who ever said Louisiana can’t bring in big business?
I may venture to say the secret to this product’s success is not the Peruvian balsam, an extract from the bark of a tree that promotes blood flow to the affected area that makes the product so successful.
Louisiana is known by several stereotypes, one in particular comes to mind: one personfied by the ever-so-popular Boudreaux-Thibodeaux jokes.
People who don’t understand Louisiana may frequently portray us as a swamp-dwelling, un-air conditioned, illiterate mass, accented by the satire of those Boudreaux-Thibodeaux jokes.
Despite the fact that Boudreaux is the creator’s real last name, the name of his product simply plays into the comical Southern stereotype that creatively draws attention to itself simply from its name.
Good thing we have such a good sense of humor, because that’s what is selling this product.
The Business Report even reported Jay Leno making wise cracks about the product on the Tonight Show.
It has gone so far as to reach ESPN’s talking heads who joked that it was the secret weapon for the LSU football team during its 2003 run at the national championship.
Everyone just has to crack a joke about it, so people remember it; an ingenious and maybe unintended marketing ploy by Boudreaux.
But putting all joking aside, Boudreaux said Oprah Winfrey has really given his Butt Paste credibility as a nationally competitive product.
Sales skyrocketed from its national visibility and a flood of stay-at-home moms amused by the Oprah Show immediately rushed out to buy the product.
“We had 70,000 hits on the Web site in 24 hours,” Boudreaux told the Business Report. “We had to turn it off.”
Boudreaux, now expecting 2004 sales to double to $4 or $5 million, is working on investing in new machinery to increase the rate of production to meet the sudden increase in demand.
So I say, good for you Boudreaux, as I slap on an extra coat of Butt Paste before I brave the harsh waters of the Gulf of Mexico on a bumpy boat ride out to the oil rigs.
Only in Louisiana!