New angles breathe new life into second launch
Published on 01/07/2002 under Ad Strategy
I saw an interesting anecdote in Forbes magazine recently about a small Oklahoma-based company that had sent the publication a news release touting a personal flu test kit for $14.50. The company’s basic pitch was that illness costs the U.S. economy billions of dollars each year and, if you’re getting the flu, it’s better to catch it right away.
Apparently, this approach wasn’t selling many test kits. Suddenly, however, with the threat of anthrax as near as your in-box, the same company was back marketing its $14.50 flu test–this time to make sure buyers only have the flu.
Forbes writers derided the company as being opportunistic, but I think they’re just being good marketers. Finding the right angle to pitch your products and services is important; in fact, business history is full of stories about products that flopped initially but became huge successes later with some tweaking.
Michael Gershman published a book several years ago, titled Getting it Right the Second Time, with almost 50 such examples. Post-it Notes (originally introduced as Press’n’Peel) almost died in test market because customers didn’t know what to do with them. When 3M changed its advertising and started demonstrating its many possible uses at major customer locations, sales took off.
Light beer is another product category that almost never happened. Nobody wanted a diet beer—especially not the manly, heavy-user demographic. But when Miller came up with its “Tastes great, less filling” campaign, the diet perception problem went away.
Elsewhere, legendary adman George Lois tells the story in several of his books about Xerox (née Haloid) and the daunting challenge of introducing the office copier. The client wanted to use its meager $300,000 budget to run trade ads aimed at a few thousand purchasing agents, but Lois knew that wouldn’t work. Nobody had ever heard of Xerox-Haloid—nor had they heard of xerog- raphy—and they had no interest in learning how to operate a complicated office machine.
Besides that, purchasing agents weren’t the ones with the back office copying problem; that rested on the shoulders of countless office managers, clerks and secretaries. Lois had heard the frustrating reports from Haloid’s salesforce, and knew this needed to be a broad-based effort.
The creative solution was to use TV spots with a carefully negotiated media buy on six network news programs on CBS. In them, a little girl with a rag doll under her arm hopped up on a stool and made a copy for Daddy, showing instantly how easy the machine was to use.
But even this inspired approach required some tweaking, because competitive duplicating equipment companies complained to the network and Federal Trade Commission that the spot was a hoax; nothing could be that easy to operate. So Lois rerecorded the spot, this time using a chimpanzee to make a copy of the girl’s rag doll. Talk about poetic justice!
I remember a situation I ran into with one of my clients several years ago involving a chemical that was injected into hydrocarbon liquids pipelines to reduce turbulence and increase throughput. With it, companies could actually exceed the nameplate capacity of any pipeline without exceeding operating pressure limits.
Soon after we started advertising this product, the pipeline industry became so underutilized that almost no one needed extra throughput capacity. So we repositioned the product from a “flow improver” to a “cash flow improver.” That is, instead of advertising its ability to increase throughput, we stressed its ability to maintain the same level of throughput with less horsepower, thereby reducing energy costs.
When the pipeline market came back a few years later, we kept the energy savings story in our promotional mix to round out the product’s total appeal.
Today, with our economy mired in another down cycle, it might be a good time for all of us to reexamine the way our products and services are marketed. Is the basic appeal right for these times? Have you reconsidered the target audiences? Are there other (perhaps radical) promotional strategies you might try?
Many years ago when I worked for an agency in Oklahoma City, I received a phone call from a gruff man who happened to be manager of sales and marketing for a respected construction equipment manufacturer in North Texas. After introducing himself and explaining the reason for his call, he asked the question I’ll never forget: “Bob, do you know anything about rat holes and mouse holes for the oil industry?”
I sheepishly admitted I didn’t. Then he laughed, and said, “Well I don’t either, but we need to find out quick because there’s lots of money to be made.”
Within several days, I was an “expert” on rat holes and mouse holes (slang oilfield terms for places where the oil well drilling apparatus and drill pipe are stored during breaks in the oil well drilling process), and was on my way to meet with him and map out an advertising program to promote his company’s truck-mounted hole digging machines for this application. I wish all companies were this flexible and aggressive in pursuing new opportunities when traditional revenue sources begin to dry up. It seems we’re only too willing today to downsize our quotas, lay off people and wait for the dark clouds to blow away.
That might make sense from an accounting standpoint, but it’s not marketing. My question to marketing managers as you trim your ad budgets, clamp down on sales expenses and cut back staffing is this: Are you doing everything you can to make your products and services more appealing to customers who are still buying?
Belt-tightening has become the standard knee-jerk management practice in recessionary times, but it’s not the only choice. There’s another school of thought that says it’s easier and less costly to make marketing gains during market down cycles than when things are booming. Are you giving your top managers any alternatives in these opportunistic times?
Like that small company in Oklahoma City, you might consider: Is it better to catch the flu and be uncomfortable for a while? Or would you rather die, not knowing about remedies that were there for the taking?