Pantene Knows Marketing - Secret Shampoo Revealed

Pantene is the world’s best-selling haircare brand, offering a variety of shampoo, conditioner and styling products, sold in around 100 countries.

But how does a shampoo become the best selling shampoo in the world? Is it the price? Is it the quality? Is it the branding and marketing? It’s the combination of all of them.

Pantene hair care products by Procter & Gamble are the number one selling hair care brand in the world, and after reading numerous (negative) product reviews in the online forums, seems like it still might not be voted as the “best shampoo in the world” *. This is an important note to take for the marketers when doing your marketing research, both quantitative and qualitative research is needed. The same people who vote another (higher priced) brand as “better shampoo”, still go and purchase the lower priced Pantene - the shampoo, which is giving them the overall better value than the “better shampoo”.

Pantene is a low price point shampoo, and the success of Pantene being the most sold shampoo in the world probably has a lot to do it being an inexpensive shampoo beating other cheap shampoos in the quality. What is worth the notice here, is that the Pantene advertising does not focus on their low price point, it focuses on quality of the shampoo, great visuals and to the feedback they hear from the consumers.

QUALITY OF THE SHAMPOO

2007 ad. Strong Hair, Glamorous, Hollywood Worthy

GREAT VISUALS

2008 ad. Strong Hair, No Questions Asked. Very strong visual

GREAT VISUALS INTERACTING WITH ENVIRONMENT

2008 ad. Stop Split Ends. Very strong visual, the message combined with the environment, the double light post.

2008 campaign. Strong hair. Interactive display, free shampoo samples distributed.

CONSUMER BASED & INTERACTIVE

Pantene doesn’t just encourage women to use their hair care products, but also cutting the hair - for charity. Pantene started Beautiful Lenghts last year to collect hair, 8 inches at the time, to be used for wigs for cancer patients. Pantene works together with American Cancer Society, who distributes the wigs made out of donated hair to women who have lost their hair due cancer treatments. Even the writer herself was inspired to cut her hair earlier this year. The Beautiful Lengths campaign is an excellent example of Pantene’s community involvement, philantrophy and interactive marketing. They for example host hair cutting events across the nation.

Another great example of Pantene’s community based marketing is their new song used in their commercials. Pantene held a user generated song writing contest at Midem in Cannes. “We are always looking for new ways to emotionally connect Pantene, the number one haircare brand in the world, with consumers,” said Freddy Bharucha, Marketing Director for Pantene North America about the song writing contest. The winning song was “Shine” by Rosi Golan, which has already aired in TV commercials like in the one below.

This TV commercial with the happy woman & girl also targets one of Pantene’s important target market: moms.

SALON SECRET SHAMPOO CAMPAIGN

As I write this blog post, Pantene’s “Salon Secret Shampoo” campaign is going on, and I am actually spoiling the secret here by telling, yes, the TV commercial with Stacy London telling you about the “secret shampoo” is about Pantene Pro-V.

Pantene teamed up with Walmart to create a Salon Secret Shampoo campaign, and the secret being told at Walmarts on November 24th. Walmart’s Eleven Moms **, real life mothers and also bloggers in Walmart’s social media reach out campaign, got to test the shampoo in a blind test and Pantene interviewed moms about their hair dilemmas. Pantene had done similar type testing in hair salons country wide and their results was that 70% of people liked Pantene shampoo better than the salon brand.

The participating moms of the Walmart’s Eleven Moms campaign are also featured in the Secret to Great Hair website and the videos, like the one above, are also in the campaign’s YouTube channel. The women are offering their honest opinions in the videos. What makes this campaign brilliant, is that the same women also promoted the campaign in their individual blogs.

They were not told what the shampoo was, but all of the Eleven Moms received a mystery box of the secret shampoo in mail and the anticipation was built online by their blog posts and videos. The bloggers also posted the Secret Shampoo badges to their blogs and told their readers they also they could receive free samples of the shampoo to test it at home.

A few weeks later, the blogger moms received another mystery box - revealing the sectet. This time with a lock and a note that the number code for the lock would arrive a few days later. The anticipation grew now even among the testers, and many bloggers (writer included) couldn’t wait the code to arrive and used creative ways to open the box to reveal the shampoo in fact was Pantene Pro-V.

The video star is Alyssa, Kingdom First Mom.

I will be very interested to hear what kind of results Pantene is getting with the Salon Secret campaign. But according the information on hand now, their target market was reached well so far online and off line. They participated in the community of their target market via the Eleven Moms, who made the campaign spread organically online. The beauty of the campaign was also that it was the real life consumers marketing the product by their honest opinions.

Ps. This Blog Post was mentioned at Advertising Age even before I hit the publish button.

* The writer hasn’t been using Pantene before, but received free samples of Pantene’s Pro-V Hair Care line during the Salon Secrets Campaign and was pleasantly surprised, but won’t quit using her salon brand shampoo. The negative comments can be found anywhere where Pantene Shampoo is reviewed, and no, the writer did not do any type of quantitative research whether Pantene got more positive or negative reviews.

** The writer is one of Walmart’s Eleven Moms, but did not participate the salon testing and this is the only blog post she has written about the “Secret Shampoo”.

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Babywearing International’s Response to Motrin

The Motrin ad campaign couldn’t have come out at a worse time for
Babywearing International, a non-profit group dedicated to babywearing advocacy and education. It is The International Babywearing Week, and their organization has been focusing on celebrating, promoting and advocating the many benefits of babywearing during this time. Part of this has been a media outreach and educating people about the facts of babywearing.

Babywearing International sent the following response concerning the Motrin mom-alogue campaign to McNeil Consumer Healthcare on November 17, 2008:

Kathy Widmer
VP of Marketing - Pain, Pediatrics, GI, Specialty
McNeil Consumer Healthcare
Dear Ms. Widmer:

I am Susie Spence, president of Babywearing International, Inc., a nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote babywearing, with benefits for both child and caregiver, through education and support. I write to you on behalf of the Babywearing International Board of Directors concerning the mom-alogue advertising campaign for Motrin, which purports to be from the point of view of a babywearing mother.

We are deeply troubled by this campaign for the following reasons:

- It disparages babywearing mothers by portraying them as victims of a painful fashion trend;

- It falsely states that baby carriers “put a ton of strain” on the wearer’s back, neck, and shoulders;

- It falsely implies that mothers who wear their babies “cry more” than those who don’t;

- It portrays the research-proven benefits of babywearing as rumor or speculation subject to doubt;

- It disparagingly implies that babywearing mothers look “tired and crazy;” and

- It was timed to run during International Babywearing Week, November 12-18, 2008, when nonprofit babywearing groups all over the world are celebrating babywearing, and thousands of volunteers are working to publicize the benefits of babywearing and to encourage the practice of babywearing.

Just as we are working to create community support for this beneficial practice so that no parent will ever again be harassed or ridiculed for babywearing, McNeil is perpetuating an image of babywearing parents as silly people who make irrational choices to be in fashion. Your “mom-alogue” could hardly be more ill-timed, off-base, or damaging to babywearing parents or to parents who have yet to reap the benefits of babywearing.

While we do sincerely appreciate that McNeil Consumer Healthcare is not so crass a corporate citizen as to continue showing the mom-alogue on the Motrin website in the face of the uproar it created on social networking sites and through email, merely discontiuing the campaign is no step toward repairing the damage it has caused and continues to cause.

Babywearing International, Inc., calls upon McNeil Consumer Healthcare to counter the effects of this offensive ad campaign in the following ways:

- Completely discontinue the campaign by not allowing any further publication of it in any media;

- Undertake an equally prominent campaign that portrays babywearing mothers as the savvy parents and consumers they actually are;

- Undertake an equally prominent campaign that explains the proven benefits of babywearing and directly counters the portrayal of babywearing as painful or as a practice that makes babywearing mothers cry;

- Undertake a campaign to educate healthcare providers as well as patients about the research-proven benefits of babywearing. In fact, babywearing makes mothers more confident and results in fewer tears for both mothers and children.

Recognizing that Motrin is a brand that has heretofore been mother-friendly as well as child-friendly, Babywearing International would consider assisting Motrin in partially repairing the recent damage to its image by having Motrin’s collaboration in our Medical Outreach Campaign, through which we provide research-based information to medical doctors, counselors, and parents concerning the health benefits of babywearing.

Most sincerely yours,

Susie Spence
President
Babywearing International, Inc.
www.babywearinginternational.org

Looking forward seeing what happens next.

Links:
More about Babywearing at Adventures in Babywearing

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Motrin Heard the News *UPDATED*

It has been interesting to see how this has been unfolding today.

My YouTube video has gotten over 2500 views, my blog posts mentioned at Peter Shankman’s blog, and at Mashable, written by Sarah Evans. Laura Fitton of Pistachio Consulting posted my video, so did 5 Minutes for Mom. And over 60 blogs blogged about it today and linked to Skimbaco Lifestyle.

A lot of upset moms.
Bad PR.
And silence from Motrin - until just an hour ago, when Motrin.com was taken down - for little upkeep called taking the ad down.

I also just received an email from Kathy Widmer, Vice President of Marketing for McNeil Consumer Healthcare.

Dear Katja -

I am the Vice President of Marketing for McNeil Consumer Healthcare. I have responsibility for the Motrin Brand, and am responding to concerns about recent advertising on our website. I am, myself, a mom of 3 daughters.

We certainly did not mean to offend moms through our advertising. Instead, we had intended to demonstrate genuine sympathy and appreciation for all that parents do for their babies. We believe deeply that moms know best and we sincerely apologize for disappointing you. Please know that we take your feedback seriously and will take swift action with regard to this ad. We are in process of removing it from our website. It will take longer, unfortunately, for it to be removed from magazine print as it is currently on newstands and in distribution.

-Kathy

Kathy Widmer
VP of Marketing - Pain, Pediatrics, GI, Specialty
McNeil Consumer Healthcare

Great - looks like the clean up of the mess has started, and so far done right. Looking forward seeing what happens next.

Motrin’s website was down for good 15 hours, and now this message has replaced the ad:

This is a great start, and hopefully a wake up call, not just for companies involved but for the rest of corporate America. Companies need to be on social media, and communicate with their target market.

Even if people don’t agree that the ad was/wasn’t offensive (which by the way is a personal opinion, and same way that we can’t say someone is wrong because they don’t like tuna fish, you can’t say that moms who found this ad offensive are wrong), the fact reminds that it took 24 hours from Motrin to response anything to those who were offended. Many in social media think 24 hours is a long time to response, we are used to instant gratification, but for a company who isn’t involved in social media, it was some what impressive to get any type of response within 24 hours and on a Sunday evening.

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Motrin Makes Moms Mad

Dear Motrin Marketing Team,

I am hoping you will feel our pain, and you have enough Motrin to survive the Motrin babywearing campaign headache you will be feeling in the next couple of days, maybe even weeks. I am truly sorry if someone looses a job over this, but frankly, this would have been easily avoided - by asking a few babywearing moms, what they thought of your babywearing = pain ad.

Me and several other moms in the online communities were offended by your ad targeting moms, which said:

Wearing your baby seems to be in fashion.

I mean in theory it’s a great idea.

…

And who knows what else they’ve come up with. Wear your baby on your side, your front, go hands free.

Supposedly, it’s a real bonding experience.

They say that babies carried close to the bod tend to cry less than others.

But what about me? Do moms that wear their babies cry more than those who don’t?

I sure do!

These things put a ton of strain on your back, your neck, your shoulders. Did I mention your back?!

I mean, I’ll put up with the pain because it’s a good kind of pain; it’s for my kid.

Plus, it totally makes me look like an official mom.

And so if I look tired and crazy, people will understand why.

The advertising video started a discussion on Twitter.com, and in the mommy blogging community. Jessica Gottlieb recommended using a #motrinmoms hashtag for the discussion and “a few hours and two thousand tweets later #MotrinMoms is the #1 search on Twitter, eclipsing SNL for the first time since Obama was elected” .

I asked my followers on Twitter what they thought of the the ad:

And the responses were flooding… I wanted to collect the message for Motrin, but unfortunately YouTube lets you make only a 10 minute video - and I couldn’t fit every comment for the ten minutes!

Here is only a short list of blog posts covering the Motrin ad fiasco:

Motrin’s New Ad Attacking Babywearing
Motrin Ad Bashes Baby Wearing
Motrin the Anti-Mom
Twitter Moms Uproar Over Motrin Video
Twitter Crouwd Isn’t Inviting Motrin Moms to Their Playdate
Motrin Moms React

And since it is 4 o’clock on Sunday morning when I’m writing this (it sucks that bad PR happens when the marketing team has a day off, doesn’t it?) , I’m keeping my marketing advice simple:

1. Always know your target market.
2. If you don’t know your target market - hire someone who does. For example, when marketing to moms - ask moms!
3. Don’t underestimate the power of the synergy of blogging communities like mommy bloggers.
4. You have to be using social media so you can monitor and take control when something like this happens. Monday morning is not fast enough. Everyone will know your story told by someone else but you by noon on Sunday.

The good news is, that any company marketing to moms can achieve amazing results by the help of the moms & the mommy blogging community. The ways companies can do this:

1. Hire a Chief Mom Officer, who knows the target market & marketing. Or hire Mom Experts to answer your questions how you can reach moms. (Motrin: hire a Chief Mom Officer, soon launching MomForce will be a great source)
2. Ask what you can do to moms, not what moms can do for you.
3. Show that you genuinely care, start a conversation and listen the answers your target market is giving you.

Written by Katja Presnal
Mommy Blogger
PR / Social Media Marketing Consultant
Mother of Three

katja dot presnal at skimbaco dot com

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Do you do business with Companies or People? Essential Social Media Marketing Lesson.

Me and Beth Schoenfeldt at Collective-E launch party

One of the mantras I learned from my entrepreneur Dad a long time ago is

“Businesses do not do business with businesses. There is always a person in a company doing business with another person in a company.”

Let me explain why understanding this is vital for your success in social media marketing.

TWO WAY COMMUNICATION

The main thing about social media marketing is that it’s not one way communication. It’s TWO way - you talk to your audience/community and it talks to you and you listen, take notes, act and that’s how you make the results!

There are several how-to-get-rich-on-social-media handbooks telling you to send auto-response notes and teaching how to do advertising on social media sites. The same type of handbooks tell you how to increase the number of followers or subscribers, how to “catch” people’s email addresses and how to build “landing pages”.

Don’t waste your money or time on those handbooks.

While learning how to make Facebook fan pages or how to really use Twitter for self-promotion is important, SEO is important and advertising is important, the most important thing about social media marketing is to learn to do two-way-one-to-one-communication, not how to blast out information to masses.

See, blasting out information is the old school way of doing things, also called “shoot and pray” - blasting out information to large quantities and praying something sticks somewhere and you receive the wanted result. The new way of doing things is to send out information to a trusted network of people who already know you.

CASE STUDY: BLASTING TO MASSES VERSUS CONTACTING YOUR NETWORK

I was recently working with a project that needed bloggers’ participation and I needed to get 5-10 bloggers involved. I contacted 10 bloggers who already knew who I was, and 10 bloggers who didn’t know me, but who blogged in the target market I was looking for. Out the first group, of ten people who already knew me, nine said yes to the project. Out of the ten who didn’t know me, nobody said yes.
Out of 20 bloggers I contacted I got 9, that’s 45% return rate on the whole group, and 90% return rate on the group who already knew me. Sadly, in this example the return rate on the “shoot and pray” method was 0% - I wonder how many unknown to me bloggers I would have had to contact to get the 9 bloggers I needed for the project.

Katja Presnal

PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS MAKES DOING BUSINESS A PLEASURE

Don’t get me wrong here - I’m not even close to suggesting mixing business and pleasure, but saying that doing business with people you like and know is much more pleasurable than doing business with someone you don’t like. Me? Frankly, I try to avoid doing business with people I don’t like.

The personal relationships matter in business, and with the social media tools people can easier find the people they want to do business. Social media sites also make referring people easy and finding business partners people who you already know recommend. The whole beauty of sites like Twitter is that you can easily jump into a conversation with people and get connected without even having to just talk business. When people know who you are as a person, they are more likely to do business with you.

Also, when you get to know a business person you like, you will want to do business with her/him and often can create something new and exciting with a company that on the first look may have seemed like the unlikely match with your company.

CASE STUDY: CROSS-PROMOTION WITH A “FRIEND” OR AN “ENEMY”

Sam’s Sandwich Shop had been open for a year and Sam wanted to do a big birthday party to get more potential customers to visit his shop. Sam sort of wanted to do cross-promotion with one of the other store-owners in the same strip-mall. A lot of customers bought both, a sandwich from Sam and a smoothie from Pete’s Smoothies next door, and it would have been a natural connection to do cross-promotion. However, Sam and Pete didn’t get along at all.

Sam mentioned this to Ashley, the flower shop owner, and since they had been helping each others out in with other business questions, they decided to do a cross-promotional campaign together. Sam’s Sandwich Shop was decorated by flowers (giving ideas what kind of bouquets work for birthdays) and Ashley hosted a “How to make centerpieces” class and served sandwiches for her clients. They advertised both events on a same newspaper ad, splitting the cost. Many people had only visited either one of the businesses before and now were introduced to another business in the same location. Both Sam and Ashley received positive feedback for their events, and received new customers for their businesses.

Many people in the social media world focus more on the word “media” and they even call it “new media” instead of social media. However, the “social” part is essential, and being the gal or guy who everyone wants to do business with is the key to success. You do not get there by just blasting self-promotional information.

When your business partners and customers become part of your community, you will have a word-of-mouth marketing network built in, and you can leverage it for business when needed. These people already know you and trust you, and know that you are not just using them to promote your business, they know they can trust you to give your helping hand for them too.

Me? I have taken social media to the next level - I am meeting people in person, like Beth Schoenfeldt, Sabina Ptacin and Katie Hellmuth from the recently launched Collective-E, a women’s networking company offering support and advice for womenpreneurs. It would be risky to take your online business relations offline, if you are not being authentic and honest online, my tip is - be yourself, no matter what.

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The World’s Worst Press Release

Tip of today: if you don’t know how to write a great press release, don’t do it at all.

PRESS RELEASE TIPS

1. Many PR people advise companies writing one press release a month, if not for anything else, but to post at free press release distribution service sites to get back linking to the company’s website and using relevant key words to get a good Google spot.

2. They also say “don’t do a press release, if you don’t have anything new to say”. This get tricky, huh? You’re suppose to get “news” out, but if you don’t really have news, you still should “get your name out” anyway.

3. Another great tip is to use statistical numbers by some well known source. Or state a problem and offer a solution.

4. Other tip PR folks like to say “use a current angle” in your press release, something to tie in with current news. For example now would be a great time for companies pitch “frugal Holiday gifts” since the economy has made everyone thinking how we can afford Christmas this year.

THE HOME BACK-UP PROTECTION COMPANY FOLLOWED ALL THESE TIPS BUT WROTE THE WORST PRESS RELEASE OF OUR TIMES

Using a good press release distributing site, stating statistical numbers, and showing a need and a solution, using a current angle - sounds like there is a lot the company did right in the press release.

But it is ALL WRONG and caused the company a tremendous amount of Very Bad PR and I among many other PR people vote this the Worst Press Release of Our Times.

The Back-Up company sells bedside shotgun racks (and I want to make sure you understand I hate the product, but it would be a whole another blog post why I think the whole product is all wrong, let’s now just discuss this one particular press release) and yesterday The Back-Up company released a press release that has been raising eyebrows among the PR people world wide.

The press release was written by using all the tips above, and the “current angle” was exploiting the horrible triple murder than happened for Jennifer Hudson’s family. What a distasteful and despicable thing to do - use someone’s tragedy to sell your products!

The original press release is copied here, because it was starting to stir the Bad PR pot for the company, the original press release was changed while I was still writing this blog post.

Too late for Back-Up company though - Chicago Tribune already published the story - and many bloggers, me included had already copied the original press release:

COULD A BEDSIDE SHOTGUN RACK HAVE SAVED JENNIFER HUDSON’S FAMILY FROM TRAGIC DEATH?




Chicago, IL (MMD Newswire) October 28, 2008 — Tragedy strikes in a Chicago home leaving 3 people dead and an Oscar winner forced to identify the bodies of her family.

Jennifer Hudson’s mother and brother were gunned down in their home Friday. Could an invaluable device have saved their lives?

It’s called The BackUp and it is a bedside shotgun rack.

Everyday, there are over 8,000 home invasions in America, many resulting in assault, rape, and murder. That’s according to a report by the US Department of Justice. 



Whether it is someone known or a stranger entering the home, too many people in this country are paying with their lives during these home invasions. The Hudson family is just one of far too many Americans gunned down in their own home.



What can be done? Law enforcement and the government aren’t solving the problem. So law-abiding citizens are now forced to take their safety, security, and life into their own hands. 



Shotguns are often weapons of choice at home because of their deterrent effect on assailants, their close-range stopping power, their affordability and their reduced risk of injury to innocent others from stray shot. But the problem is storing them in a place where you don’t have to turn your back on your assailant. Propped in the corner or under the bed takes valuable time to get to, and could cost you your life. 



For more information, visit the website at www.the-backup.com 

Available for immediate interview, contact company president John Peters at
(612) 605-3613 or email at press-info@the-backup.com.

Interestingly Chicago Tribune run a follow up story with an interview of the president of the shotgun rack company Home Back-Up Protection, A. John Peters, who said “that he didn’t issue the news release to capitalize on the Chicago family’s pain” and the interview continues “asked if he thought the ad might offend people, Peters said he expected it might. “Just having a gun rack offends a lot of people.””

But changing the press release and trying to say it wasn’t exploiting, which it clearly was, is all too late. Changing the press release just tells that the company knew it was wrong to do it the first place, and is now trying to cover their bases.

The blogs are running wild with this story. The damage for The Back-Up is already done.

“Good news” is that the Home Back-Up Protection company will get the amount of PR they ever imagined - people even say they deserve all the bad PR they can get, and they sure are getting a full load of it.

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Get noticed in your next trade show

I watched Big Idea with Donny Deutch a while back and he had two mompreneurs asking how they could get noticed and present their product in the upcoming trade show, without being too pushy, and how they would get people to stop at their trade show booths. Here are some of my ideas, which many of them are the same as in the show. Keep reading and you will also find an excellent real life example how one company made me really want to see them in a trade show.

1. Connect before you go. Contact prospective retailers, introduce your product, and let them know where and when they can see your line. Ask if they’d like to make an appointment at the trade show. I can not say this too many times - the personal connections make all the difference in business, start building them before the trade show.

2. If they don’t get back to you, it is OK to contact again before the trade show, and ask if they are interested in making an appointment, while announcing a new product release, other company news, or maybe a celebrity sighting (with your product) or recent media attention - something saying “others love our products, you might too” - without actually saying it.

3. Your trade show booth needs to grab attention, be inviting and be very easy for the buyers to get to know your product. Biggest fail: not enough lighting.

4. Make ordering super easy, with easy to read order sheets available. It’s always good to have these tucked inside your brochure, even for those who just get the brochure without stopping and really talking to you at the show.

5. Gimmicks are always good, but be careful not to go overboard, and that your prospective
customers will see your product, and are not just overpowered with your gimmick. An example of an excellent gimmick follows below.

6. Follow-up! There are no guarantees the buyers will make the order, until, well, they make the order. Great communication and follow up will triple your chances of getting those orders in.

Treating your retailers right is the key to successful relationship with them. Your retailers are always part of your team, like learnt from the case study.

I recently got two emails from Scandinavia Child inviting me to visit them at the trade show booth in a trade show I unfortunately didn’t have chance to go. But Scandinavian Child made me feel welcome to visit their booth, interested in their product and appreciate them as a company.

First email I got from them was about two weeks before the trade show, saying something like “people who visit our trade show booth often say how great our products are, how they like the design, but the thing we hear most is “my feet hurt from walking” and we wanted to do something about it” and the email continued explaining that they will be gicing away Dr Scholls massaging gel shoe inserts to easy everyone’s pain. Brilliant! Gimmick, yes, but did it make me want to visit their booth? Yes!

A week later, another email arrived, saying something like “Come by Booth 6845 to see our finalists in the JPMA Innovation Awards competition” and introducing their two new products, which also were finalists in the JPMA Innovation Awards competition. This time it was offering a validation why their products were great by giving an example that other people think they are great too, without actually saying “our products are the best”, which of course everyone wants to say.

Like Scandinavian Child - think what you can do for your buyers, and then think after that what they can do for you.

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Case Study - Carol’s Cuties

Is the more retailers you have the better? Not necessary as our case study shows. Read first more about the four Ps in marketing mix, and especially how “Place” should be one of important pieces of your marketing strategy. Told by a girl to a girl, and trying to avoid all the difficult words so even small biz owners with no business education can follow.

CASE STUDY CAROL’S CUTIES - MORE RETAILERS ISN’T ALWAYS THE SOLUTION

I have a great example of a designer who makes handmade products and has almost 200 retailers but her company is not using the retailers as a marketing tool as effectively as they could. In fact the designer told me, that she feels she is competing with her retailers and wishes she could get all the sales from her own onlinestore. Let’s call her company “Carol’s Cuties”, but so you will know - this is not the real name of the company, nor her name is Carol. Carol’s Cuties is a 6 year old company. And with almost 200 retailers Carol’s Cuties is still struggling, and sounds like having 200 retailers might actually be worse than having 50 good ones.

What did Carol do right?

Carol got her products to almost 200 stores, that’s amazing isn’t it?! She wanted to raise the awareness of Carol’s Cuties so she did exactly what I would suggest her to do - got her products in many stores, even if it meant lowering the price or doing drop-shipping for online stores. The retailers were her marketing force, they told their customers of her handmade product. Carol’s Cuties reached their target market very effectively, and probably in a very short period of time. You might even call it a marketing miracle, but just don’t do it yet.

What did Carol do wrong?

She didn’t choose retailers who share the message she is trying to voice out with her product. The product is sold in variety of stores, having totally mixed and opposite messages. So even though she got her product known and out there - this by selling for anyone who would buy- didn’t actually work as a brand builder. And her price was too low, now she is selling too many products on too low wholesale price and her business is struggling.

HANDLING 200 STORES

Carol’s Cuties is a handmade product Carol still makes herself. Yes, it is possible even with 200 retailers. Because over half of those retailers are online retailers and Carol just drop-ships for many of them. Some of the retailers sell only 5-10 Carol’s Cuties a year, so she can still handle tens of drop-shipping accounts herself. And can you believe this, but Carol is one superwoman, she also handles all of her retailers herself. Selling, staying in contact etc. with her close to 200 retailers! As amazing as it sounds, but also sounds like she is wasting a lot of time. While “brand building” is important and I’d keep the high profile stores that goes with my product’s brand, even with 10 product sales a year, sounds like she was collecting retailers just for the sake of it. And she should just drop some of them and focus on getting sales from the good ones.

MESSAGE 200 STORES SENDS OUT

You know when you graduate from school and you don’t have a lot of experience, you add things in your resume to make it look better; like you were the team captain in a sports team or won spelling bee several times. But someday you will have some real work experience, and you won’t show these in your resume anymore.

(And to be honest, doesn’t it become a bit embarrassing at some point to keep showing your hobbies from high school in your resume? Especially if now you are 200 pound “ballet dancer”. Just saying.)

Well, Carol has that amazing resume now - when I talk about resume, I call her retailer list a resume- but she is still showing the “spelling bee wins”, “swim team accomplishments” and everything else from Kindergarten, and unfortunately some of the real accomplishments, in this case the high quality stores, which carry her products, don’t shine through and be the effective marketing tool as she hopes they would be. People are not “wow, her products are even in Laura’s Luxury Store” because the list of stores just is that: a long list of stores, sending a message “Carla’s Cuties are available everywhere”.

Which message of course isn’t bad - if the truth was that the products are also sold in quantities in all these places and Carol’s Cuties actually were everywhere. But when some of these stores sell only 10 Carol’s Cuties a year - there is no way Carols products are “everywhere” with those sale numbers. Now it just looks “nice product, sold everywhere, but why haven’t I seen it before”. Don’t have your products “sold everywhere” if they actually don’t sell everywhere. Especially if the stores are not sending the messages you want your product to send.

Like I said, Carol’s product is a handmade product she makes herself. The “available everywhere” message doesn’t really go well with the “handmade with love” message. You start thinking, how does she have time to make products for 200 stores and still say they are all handmade by her. A mixed message again.

RETAILERS AS CAROL’S COMPETITORS? NO!!!!! THEY ARE YOUR TEAM MEMBERS!

Carol feels that the retailers are not making her enough money and she is just making, packing and shipping her products from her home all the time, and still not making enough money to pay herself a good salary. Her company actually has some cash flow problems. She feels that her own retailers are her competitors and she is trying to get the sales from her own website carolscuties.com instead of customers buying them from her retailers.

There are so many things wrong here that I don’t even know where to start.

First of all, retailers are never your competitors, they are your team members, they are helping you to get your product sold. Look again that little circle I did about Your Marketing Mix - the “Place”, your retailer is INSIDE your marketing mix circle. It is not an external thing totally out of your control, your retailers are part of your team, part of the sales force you have created, they are in your circle. They are not your competitors and liability, they are your asset.

If you feel your retailers are a liability or your competitors, you should make changes as soon as possible.

The retailers think they are doing you a favor by selling and promoting your product, and I can assure you that they would rather put their money on a product from a company who actually wants them to succeed and sell their products - this is the way they get profit too.

Retailers want to sell your product.

If you don’t want them to sell your product, drop them as your retailer.

No wonder the retailers are not making enough sales for Carol, if Carol doesn’t even want them to make many sales.

Over all seems like this is a big mess Carol should fix as soon as possible.

HOW TO FIX IT?

Most important thing right now would be branding Carol’s Cutie - to get the “message” down. What is “Carol’s Cuties”, what is the image, who buys it, why they buy it, and everything involved with branding the Carol’s Cutie. And after that everything Carol does has to be in the same line as the brand. Also “where the customer buys it”.

If Carol wants her product “available everywhere”, she should start thinking of a distribution center, and how she can handle the “available everywhere”. Obviously she has now reached her limit making the product from home, so she should also start thinking of how to start making the product in bigger quantities, maybe even how to lower her manufacturing costs. Maybe she can hire a friend to make them with her to start with, or have a part of the product pre-manufactured. If the message is “available everywhere” Carol should work with her retailers to get more sales from all of them to achieve this goal to really get her product not just available everywhere, but sold everywhere. Big problem here might be the cost.

If Carol wants to keep her product “special and handmade to order” she should drop half of her retailers immediately, especially all of the stores who don’t have any other products “special and handmade to order” - all those stores which do not go together with the brand Carol is trying to build for Carol’s Cuties. After all, half of the retailers are not really making money to her anyway and other half Carol feels are her competitors.

Also, if you are not making enough money with your wholesale price, your price is wrong. It is understandable Carol feels her retailers are her competitors - because she is selling her product way too cheap for them. You should always be happy with your wholesale price, and to be able to celebrate each wholesale contract. If you have your own website, the sales from there are just cream on the top, because you are making so much more than with the price you are happy to sell your product = wholesale price.

If you sell your product directly to the customers, your retail price should always be the same as the retail price at your retailers. If you offer your product cheaper on your own website than what your retailers are selling it in their stores for - then you are competing against your retailers. And why would they want to sell your product, if they are competing against you? They have enough competitors that they don’t want one of their own vendors to be one!

ONE POSSIBLE STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE

1. Re-think Carol’s Cuties Brand.

2. Higher the price of a Carol’s Cutie. And be comfortable with your new wholesale price.

3. Price might already drop some retailers, and drop most of or all of the retailers who do not go with the Carol’s Cuties brand.

4. Offer drop-shipping only for the stores with high visibility or which you feel are the stores you would proudly like to have in your “my retailers” list. If a store has been successful with your drop-shipping program and continuously brings you sales, you might even ask if they would be willing to start stocking your product. This would save you some time from packing and shipping.

5. Start working together more and better with your retailers. Keep them updated and excited about your product. Do joint-marketing efforts with them and help them to sell your product. When your retailers are excited about your product, they will want to sell more of them.

YOUR INPUT

Please leave your comments. What do you think Carol should do?

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Retailers are part of your marketing

If you are an entrepreneur and still haven’t heard of Marketing Mixand four Ps of marketing, hurry up and do some reading.

Basicly the four Ps, Product, Price, Place and Promotion together make your target where your would like your product to be. Promotion includes what most people wrongly think is “marketing” - the advertising, PR and what ever the sales person tells you. But like the fancy graph above (marketing for girls, should also look like girls, right?) shows, Promotion is only one part of the Big Marketing Mix.

I’ve had several interesting discussions with the women in our network this week, and seems like many people struggle with one part of the marketing mix - the Place.

PLACE

-Distribution, market coverage, channel members, inventory management, warehousing, distribution centers, order processing, transportation, reverse logistics

Ok, I understand that now you might feel that your company is so small, you might never have a “distribution center” and your “transportation” is you going to the post office and mailing your products, and “market coverage” is only a word you can dream of, and this post is not worth reading.

No, this post is specifically for you - the small business owner, the mom making her products from home,  and even for the designer who already has many retailers but doesn’t understand why it isn’t working out the way she thought it would.

According to a PR professional in our network many designers and manufacturers feel that their biggest problem is how to get their products in the right stores - and seek help how to market their products to retailers. I recently had a discussion with a designer whose products are in almost 200 retail stores, but she feels she is competing with her own retailers. I recently said in a PodCast interview that I as a retailer I’m lucky that sometimes I don’t even have to do my work as hunting down the best products - they find me.

So I thought - I need to write down a little bit of why your retailers are important part of your marketing strategy, and how to choose the right retailers. And most importantly, how to make this P of the four Ps in the marketing mix to work for you. This is just very basic marketing talk, from a girl to a girl, but I realized this week, that some of these concepts are not as commonly known (or at least in use!) in our network that I thought of and there is a need for some girl-to-girl-marketing-talk. The most important part of this is “Carol’s Cuties Case Study” in a separate post.

CHOOSING A RETAILER

I know, you might be tempted to say that I’m happy if just anyone buys my products, but think again. YOU choose your retailers, and your retailer always has to represent also your company and your product.Obviously, the same product is not sold at Wal-mart and Dillards. The retailer gives customers an idea what to expect (cheap price, high quality, great customer service…)  even before she steps in.

CHOOSE A MESSAGE YOUR PRODUCT SAYS - AND RETAILER WITH THE SAME MESSAGE

If your product says “unique and high quality”, your retailer shouldn’t say “we have the lowest price”. Your retailer should also say “unique and high quality”. Your retailer shouldn’t say “we ship the same day” if your product is made to order and takes a week to finish.  The message your retailer is giving out, always has to go together with your message. The customer looking for a “unique and high quality” is not going to look for it from “we have the lowest price” store - she will never even go in, and if your “unique and high quality” product is in there, you are not reaching your potential customers. (I know, should be evident, right?)

Can your product have several messages? Yes, they can, but obviously your messages can not be “cheap” and “luxury”  - your product can not have two opposite messages. But your product can be “gift item” and “everyday item” or “low price” and “practical” - and you can choose different retailers to voice out the different messages your product voices out. But also when two of your retailers voice out two opposite messages - your product is in a wrong place in one of them.

I’m thinking here as a customer - if I go to a  “store I like” and see a product, and then I go to a ”store I can’t stand” and see the same product - I’m not going back to the “store I like” to buy it. I don’t buy it at all. Because I will think, “well, I really liked that product, but it was sold at “store I don’t like” and all the people who shop there buy it too; I think I’ll keep looking for something else”. End of story.

Just think about it, it’s not always the product you’re buying, it’s also the buying experience in a certain store. Yes, sometimes you tolerate a bad experience for a low price, or a product nowhere else available, but as a manufacturer you shouldn’t think your retailers as the last straw the customer has - you should give your customer the opportunity for the buying experience she expects with a product like yours.

RETAILER HAS TO HAVE A MESSAGE TOO

This same mixed message idea goes for retailers too by the way. I know a children’s boutique, where they sell expensive luxury clothing AND have a room full of used clothing and strollers. Even though I say too, buy higher quality, so it lasts longer, and you can recycle it afterwards - I wouldn’t sell used clothing in my store. The customer who will pay 60$ for a children’s t-shirt wants to feel she is buying her product from a “high quality boutique”  - not from the “store where they also sell used clothes”. Same for the customer who buys the used clothing - seeing a 60$ t-shirt intimidates her to even step in, and she might think “their used clothes are probably too high for me too”. While there are customers who buy both, 60$ t-shirts and used clothing (yes, I’m one of those), the store is still sending out a wrong message; or better yet, a mixed message or no message at all. Believe me, the “general store” idea “little bit of something for everyone” doesn’t work often. 

SELLING TO RETAILERS

DON’T GIVE UP

That’s my most important message. Keep pitching and selling and until you get a very specific “no thanks” and “don’t contact us anymore”, don’t give up. I get a lot of e-mails, brochures and other sales material of different products. Actually so much I don’t always have time to answer back to the manufacturers (I promise, I’ll try to do better). Many times it’s not the product why I am not buying it for my store, it might be that my inventory is already too big, I have already made my orders for the season, or I love the product but it doesn’t go with the message I’m trying to voice out. And as an online retailer,  often it is that the product pictures are bad.

I got a brochure of really nice products and thought I’d love to offer them for my customers, but I already topped my budget, and didn’t contact the designer. She contacted me and offered to do drop-shipping - me just placing the products on my store and as I sell them, the designer will ship them straight for the customer. If the designer hadn’t contacted me and followed up, her products wouldn’t be sold at my store right now.

Always follow up. They might be just busy, and haven’t gotten into making an order - and need your help. Or you’ll find out a reason why they are not ordering. Then you’ll know if the timing was just bad, and maybe the retailer might want to buy from you next season, or you’ll know to take them off your list and not waste your time anymore. If you feel your product’s message is the same as the retailer’s, and see your product sold there, the retailer most likely would love to have your product in. The buyers just get so many sales pitches, that sometimes the good ones can be un-noticed or just forgotten. It is your job as a seller to follow up. (And when I do my pep talk to retailers, I’ll of course say to them it’s their job to follow up).

Now, I will follow up with this blog post, and gather from several retailers, how they would like to be contacted and do another blog post just focusing on that.

RETAILERS BUILDING YOUR BRAND

The “message” your product sends is part of the brand you are trying to create for your product.

BRAND A brand is a collection of images and ideas representing an economic producer; more specifically, it refers to the concrete symbols such as a name, logo, slogan, and design scheme. Brand recognition and other reactions are created by the accumulation of experiences with the specific product or service, both directly relating to its use, and through the influence of advertising, design, and media commentary. A brand is a symbolic embodiment of all the information connected to a company, product or service. A brand serves to create associations and expectations among products made by a producer. A brand often includes an explicit logo, fonts, color schemes, symbols, sound which may be developed to represent implicit values, ideas, and even personality. (from Wikipedia)

If you choose a retailer that doesn’t voice out your message, doesn’t go together with your brand, having that retailer might do your brand more harm than good. Do not sell your products “just to anyone who will buy” - of they will be the only retailer ever buying. The good retailers do not want “bad retailers” selling the same product as they do. This is why I’ve had some amazing moments with my store, that “I got the priviledge to buy” some brand and also a big dissappointment when a huge retailer wanted to buy one of my vendors products but said that they wouldn’t buy, if it was sold in small stores, like mine. I also had one really nice product in my store, saw a couple other stores, where they were sold, and didn’t want to offer that product in my store anymore.

But when you find a good retailer, a perfect match for your product, sometimes it is good to have that store as your retailer even if money wise it wouldn’t make sense (they don’t want to order for the limit you have set as your minimum wholesale order, or they bargain the price lower etc). And online - you might want to use drop-shipping as your method of getting your product in stores. This offers the stores an opportunity to try out your product without a risk. I will write more about drop-shipping in a separate blog post.

Having “the right” retailer can also help you to get other retailers to buy your product. Remember, they don’t know that you made a special arrangement with that first good retailer, they just see they are sold in the good retailer. It is so important to list all your retailers in your marketing material. If your retailers are truly building your brand, the list of them is almost like part of your product’s resume. Or like a girl scout badge - something to be proud of - you should be proud your product is sold in these stores. If you feel that you are not that proud of some of the stores - they shouldn’t be your retailer. The right retailers will make your brand stronger and send the right image - to your customers and other retailers.

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