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bomccarthy -> RE: OT Pet Peeves (6/13/2015 11:50:13 PM)
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Every business lives or dies based on how many products it can sell. And selling requires tapping into the desires and needs of a customer. Ignoring the serious issue of whether a pharmaceutical company ought to be pitching prescription drugs to the general public (“Side effects may include explosive diarrhea and serious stomach bleeding. In rare cases, sudden heart attacks have occured.”), a consumer product manufacturer has to figure out how to make the consumer want the product.
Take the example of the shampoo with “active naturals.” People buy shampoo for a lot of reasons – and clean hair is near the bottom of that list of reasons. Every shampoo on the market will clean your hair, and most will “add body and shine”. Walk down the soap and shampoo aisle of your grocery or drug store and you’ll find myriad brands of shampoo taking up half the aisle. If you’re a shampoo manufacturer looking to increase your market share by a measly 5%, what do you do?
Target a relatively new segment – “me-too organics” (I just made this up). These consumers want to be seen as friendly to the environment, with the kind of body and shine in their hair that hippies could only dream of. Unlike the earth mother and fathers who trade what they grow in the community garden at the local “farmers’” market, me-too organics aren’t really concerned about details – they’re not about to verify that their shampoo actually is hand-mixed in a clapboard house in rural Maine. As long as their shampoo has “natural ingredients” it can be manufactured in a large chemical plant outside Chicago or St Louis.
So, do you simply advertise that your shampoo has “natural ingredients”? Everyone and their brother says that. Cyanide is a natural ingredient. Nope – you need a description that stands out from the others. “Active naturals.” Short … descriptive … positive … no one else is using it. It even has a hard consonant sound that you create with your tongue against the top of your mouth. (Laugh all you want – that’s how Pfizer settled on “Viagra”).
Yes, in an English teacher’s mind it’s a dumb phrase that doesn’t mean anything. But, from a doctor’s point of view, shampoo that does anything more than clean your hair is a dumb product. And you’re not selling to doctors or English teachers, unless they also want natural ingredients that will add body and shine to their hair. What’s more, people who want this body and shine are willing to pay more if they get it through “active naturals.”
And that’s the point – a premium price. Business people discovered long ago that products with a premium aura can be sold at a higher price. And in our day and age, “natural ingredients” create a premium aura. In 40 years, maybe not so much. But you sell to the market you have now, not the market that may exist when your grandchildren have children.
It’s all about the dollars, and always has been. I’m looking at a 1969 ad for the Pontiac GTO Judge, with a “bump-proof Endura snoot.” What was “Endura”? The plastic urethene covering the front bumper and surrounding the grill. Unless someone can tell me where “Endura” came from, I think Pontiac and their ad people made the word up. I’m not even going to touch the late ‘60’s Dodge “Scat Pack”.
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