Grout Bully (grout cleaning & painting) – A Marketing Review
You turn on the light and take a few steps into the bathroom.
Pausing for a moment, you glance around at the tiny room itself. What should be sanitary to near hospital conditions is far from it. There’s a foul stench that hangs in the air, a thin layer of grime on the tiles, and sadly, there’s still a brown stain in the middle of the floor thanks to cousin Bill’s gross aiming error during last week’s Spicy Burrito Party.
Let’s leave the other messes in the bathroom aside and concentrate on the grout for now.
How do you clean the grout or outright change its color?
Doing a job like that properly can take hours of tedious and precise labor. Cleaning the grout is one thing; changing its color is another project in itself. Calling some contractors for an estimate could always work, but you know that it’ll probably be expensive.
Isn’t there a quick and easy way to clean the grout? You know, take a few shortcuts here and there and claim to have a quality finish.
What’s this? Grout Bully?
Grout Bully website — www.GroutBully.com
Really? Is it so? Does it have a flashy commercial that’ll make you want to order the product right away, never thinking twice or having second thoughts about it?
Grout Bully TV commercial
Let’s take a closer look and see what the TV commercial is trying to sell us do-it-yourself wannabes.
Grout Bully TV commercial — Scrub, scrub, scrub, all day long . . .
The Grout Bully TV commercial opens with a woman trying to clean the grout lines on her kitchen floor. She keeps scrubbing away but that grout still looks like it matches the tiles’ color. Can anybody help this poor woman and give her a quick and easy way to clean her grout lines?
Grout Bully TV commercial — Hey everybody! It’s Marc Gill!
Look out, world! Here comes Mark Gill! He’s large and in charge. And bald.
Notice how he puts an emphasis on the “R” when saying, or rather yelling, the name of the product. You know that it’s a great product when the salesman loves saying its name so enthusiastically! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrout Bully!
Grout Bully TV commercial — Make that bathroom tile look like new instead of number two!
That’s right. You can allegedly transform that hideous looking grout into something that’ll make you smile as you look down while taking a porcelain cruise.
Grout Bully TV commercial — So smooth that it almost resembles paint or shoe polish.
As Marc demonstrates, all you have to do is give Grout Bully a good ol’ squeeze while sliding it along your grout line. Don’t worry about that excess grout substance getting onto the tiles. Just like paint, you’ll be able to wipe it away later.
Grout Bully TV commercial — And just wipe away the excess grout material with the special chamois.
Remember the excess grout material left behind by the extra wide Grout Bully applicator? The device so wide that a toddler can use it and still hit the grout lines?
Just use the super special chamois and wipe it away. Hopefully your fingers won’t dig into the space between tiles and actually wipe away the new grout paint (or whatever they call the substance) along with the excess.
Grout Bully TV commercial — Behold! The magic behind the Grout Bully!
And what is the secret behind the Grout Bully?
What supposedly makes it different than, say, a tube of flat paint or even shoe polish?
Marc Gill explains that the secret “. . . is our powerful nanotechnology formula that penetrates and eliminates the mold, mildew and bacteria that stains grout.”
Oh, I get it. It’s one of those super-secret formulas that was conceived with futuristic nanotechnology, unlike those other paints and cleaners sold in the marketplace today. I bet the competitors would sure love to get their greedy little paws on that nanotechnology secret formula. Then again, a product as high-tech and seemingly futuristic (Hey, do those other grout cleaning products claim to use a freakin’ nanotechnology formula? I don’t think so!) as the Grout Bully will probably dominate that corner of the home improvement marketplace, putting those other companies out of business.
Grout Bully TV commercial — Must . . . keep . . . scraping . . . this . . . $#%&ing . . . grout!
Don’t you just hate being severely unshaven while trying to scrub your grout, and doing such a crappy job at it?
Can’t there be an easy way to complete a task that should normally take hours and a bit of patience?
Grout Bully TV commercial — These straight, fat lines are too challenging!!! Mother$%#&er!
Why are these fat lines so challenging to paint over? The tiles provide a straight and easy groove, but I still can’t manage this easy task! Damn those Kindergarten-level coloring skills!!!
It’s interesting how Marc Gill’s only complaints against paint pens are that they allegedly “. . . only come in white and can’t fill large grout lines.”
What about something called a paint brush? They come in all sizes, and the extra paint can easily be cleaned off the tiles. What’s cool is that cans of paint also come in like a million different colors, and that paint can even be used in other projects around the home!
Grout Bully TV commercial — It’s The Grout Guys!!!
Man, I was going to pay a contractor $1,800 to re-grout my kitchen and bathroom, but not $1,875. Maybe I’ll have to settle for the $10 (plus a car payment for P&H) Grout Bully. That’s almost a fair comparison, right?
Gee, why isn’t the Grout Bully comparing its price against those household tile and grout cleaners that have been around for ages? What about comparing it to the costs of a paint brush and small can of paint?
Grout Bully TV commercial — What catches your eye first: The new color of grout or the shine off the top of Marc’s head?
When going from a dark to a light color (whether it’s from the previous dark color of the grout or the thick layer of grim and mildew), the general rule is that you need two coats of paint. Unless the first layer of paint is super thick, then the previous color will still be semi-visible through the first layer. Hence the need for a second coating of paint.
Seeing how you’ll be wasting extra Grout Bully paint/substance on the tiles instead of the grout (the website’s FAQ says they designed the applicator tip to be huge on purpose), how much Grout Bully should you purchase to actually change the color of grout?
Grout Bully TV commercial — The BIG promotion for Grout Bully!
At the end of the TV commercial we’re hit with the promotion.
For a GRAND TOTAL of only $25.90 ($10 + $7.95 P&H + $7.95 (P&H for “free” Grout Bully kit)), you can have the Grout Bully kit shipped to your home or business. Keep in mind that the $15.90 that you’re paying in P&H fees are NOT INCLUDED in the product guarantee.
WARNING – Be careful if you enter your credit card company and press the “Order Now” button. Many of these as-seen-on-TV company websites do NOT give you a final confirmation screen before accepting your CC number.
FINAL THOUGHTS
So what is the Grout Bully and what makes it so special?
Looking at the TV commercial, the Grout Bully looks like a tube of paint. Nothing presented in the commercial gives the impression that it’s anything but a style of paint in a squeezable tube with a large applicator that’ll waste a LOT of the product. And for a product that costs a total of $25.90 and takes WEEKS to arrive at home, that’s an expensive (time and money) tube of paint. Well, it’s actually two tubes since you’re receiving a “free” one with the promotion.
If anything, the sales pitch in this commercial shows that it doesn’t take much effort to repaint the grout between tiles. Cleaning the grout lines can be easy when dealing with large tiles common in kitchens. It can be a royal pain in the ass when dealing with lots of small tiles common in bathrooms.
A suspicious thing in the Grout Bully’s advertising is that it presents itself as an incredibly cheap and easy solution to a problem that can A) take a great deal of time when completing it correctly, or B) require the skills of a handyman. Comparing the product to expensive contractors was just ridiculous.
The company’s website is extremely simple and doesn’t give any real information about the product. Another red flag. The spelling error (check out “EVERYTIME” at the top of the page) doesn’t help matters either.
Perhaps it’s not really a surprise that complaints are piling up against Grout Bully on the website for the Better Business Bureau. The top complaints deal with billing / collection issues, delivery issues, and problems with the product / service.
Remember that when products hide details and/or give unfair comparisons to other products or methods, then chances are likely that the seller is trying to hide something. In this case, what is it that Grout Bully does better and/or easier than other methods or products?
By focusing on the grout alone instead of the entire area (tiles, grout & more) like other kitchen and bathroom cleaners that advertise on television, the people selling Grout Bully have created their own little (very little mind you) niche. They’ve got you focused on the grout and NOT the tiles. You may already have tile cleaner under the kitchen sink. But what about something specifically for the grout?
That’s marketing for you.
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All of the Grout Bully commercial images were screenshots of a TV commercial currently available on YouTube. For more product information, please visit the company’s website at www.GroutBully.com.
Grout Bully is a registered trademark.
RellimZone.com is not affiliated with Grout Bully.