Trends: Gush paint

Some companies experiment with marketing their brands in hotels and airports; they’re a way to get exposure to customers who will then try the brand at home. Gush paint, which sells wall paint designed to absorb pollutants, is using a similar approach: they landed a large health system as a customer, and painted many of its delivery rooms with their paint. Since the paint is pricier than other kinds, this is the kind of detail the hospital is likely to highlight to new moms—some of whom may decide they’d rather not bring their newborn home to a less-than-healthy home environment.

That’s especially powerful product placement when marketing to new parents, who are often suddenly open to lifestyle changes and spending in new categories (in Gush Paint’s home country of Singapore, births are very likely to be to new parents—the country’s fertility rate is 1.14 children per woman). Other companies have built big businesses on marketing to customers at a key point in their lives: Gillette, for example, has marketed itself by sending free razors to people on their 18th birthdays, to get them to buy blades.

Increasingly, indoor air quality is important to consumers: while the pandemic certainly raised awareness around ventilation and air filtration, even in years beforehand there was a growing drumbeat of studies and news stories about how much indoor air quality affected people’s lives. Gush Paint’s product is an interesting reversal, since lead paint was historically a major source of health problems—now, paint is being used to solve them instead.

Gush Paint has raised money from property developers and construction companies, which use its product as a selling point in new and remodeled homes. This gives the real estate sector a way to tap into growing interest in health and wellness.