I was reminded this week by one of the people I work with about one of my little "philosophies of marketing", or "how to win” ideas. Here it is, as I think it is a good one.There is a constant drive these days for new product. Marketing teams are under a lot of pressure to identify new products and innovation. In the cosmetics and toiletries space, the rate of failure is staggeringly high. Depending on sources it could be as much as 90 %.
New products are a lot of work, cost a lot of time and resources. They are a huge risk. Of course they are important, but are not the only thing.
Hence my challenge to all marketing teams: interrogate your formulations, you may be surprised at what you find.
Constantly sit down with people who know the formulations and how they are put together. Ask them to explain it. Ask them what story or claim you could make. Read the clinicals and other documents. Keep asking what can we say? What can this do? How is this different from our competition?
In David Ogilivy’s book "Ogilvy on Advertising" he talks about how the line in one of his famous print ads for Rolls Royce (even at 60 miles an hour all you can hear is the clock ticking) came from one of the technical manuals.
One of the most successful campaigns I have been involved in was for Johnsons Baby Oil. A product when I took it on was told as it was basically mineral oil and fragrance, and had been used for tanning which people realized it was not advised and that it would die out. We did the interrogation and our regulatory leader suggest we look at an old clinical which said that "when used on wet skin baby oil seals in more moisture than lotions and creams when used on dry skin". This somewhat clumsy sounding sentence we used, and dramatically grew the business. And I mean dramatically.
So your fairly generic product could be harboring a fortune in untapped sales and share if you interrogate it.
Do you have any other examples?
Watch an example of a Johnson's Baby Oil ad that uses this claim on YouTube: click here, or watch on the blog
1 comments:
Yes. Similar case history when we demonstrated Vaseline Intensive Care Lotion was the first product ever able to clinically substantiate that it "healed" skin. It was the first skin care product to breakthrough beyond Pond's cold cream - at the time Pond's sales represented better than 90% of all skin care product sales. Until then, all lotions were sold only to "smooth" the skin and remove make up. It started and openned the category for all the lotions to follow. George Fabian was our lead partner on that new product development assignment. Great question. Thanks Gary. Hadn't thought about that assignment for a while.
Post a Comment