bye bye ladies

When Unilever’s Persil launched its ‘dirt is good campaign’ a couple of years ago, P&G’s Ariel responded with a campaign based on the thought that ‘clean is better’.

That episode sums up one of the biggest dilemmas facing any brand manager: Sell the product and you’re in danger of competing for your customers’ business on a purely transactional or functional basis. Sell benefits or the social role of the brand and you are always vulnerable to rivals like Ariel coming along with a better product.

So it was fascinating to read in this week’s Marketing magazine, that Unilever’s Dove is shifting from a communication platform based on ‘real beauty’ to a more science-based, product efficacy story.

Gone are the real women in their white underwear. Instead we’ll get the image of a flower and raindrops “intended to represent the product’s three moisturising ingredients,” according to the report. Advertising will explain how the product helps to hold moisture at the surface of the skin.

Yep, it’s a real shame to see the chubby ladies go, but you can see why the Dove brand people have done it. They are integrating product claims into their communication and working hard to establish product superiority. And they are doing this because they understand that the product/benefit choice is in truth a false dilemma. The best brands don’t sell the product or the emotional and social benefits, they sell both.

The precise balance varies from category to category. Who is doing especially well in the household cleaning category at the moment? Reckit Benckieser with Cillit Bang and Finish, both of which employ what you might call ‘ultra’ product-efficacy strategy. On the other hand Unilever’s big commercial success in recent years has been Lynx deodorants for men who aren’t quite grown up yet. It’s a brand about pure emotion

But if anything ever goes wrong for Cillit Bang, it is vulnerable. If it is ever found to be toxic or rot your dish clothes they have no deeper relationship, no fund of consumer goodwill if you like, to see it through the bad times.

Fifteen years ago Persil introduced a super-effective formula called Persil Power. It was deadly effective. So effective in fact that it didn’t just get rid of stains, it ate the fabric on which the stains appeared. It was a disaster. If Persil didn’t already have powerful consumer equity based on ownership of ‘motherhood’, it is quite possible that it wouldn’t be around today.

The best brands today stand for something. They have a story or a social function as well as product functionality. It’s about knowing and understanding what your brand is about and always speaking in your own tone of voice. But it has to be underpinned by a strong product. If you understand what your brand is really about, it should be able not only to get across its product message, but to really own it.