Dryel and other million-dollar miscues
By John R. Graham
Far too often, marketers turn out to be
their own worst enemies. It seems easy for them to commit the
unpardonable sin of business: they start believing their own
baloney. What they attempt to pass off as “marketing
principles” often turn out to be little more than
marketing prejudices.
With all their limitations, warts, and
crazy ideas, marketers can play a critical role in the success
of a business. Unfortunately, they are often overruled by
management and, more often than not, the sales department.
Is it fair to blame marketers for Procter
& Gamble’s ill-fated Dryel? Is this a good example of
what marketers can accomplish? In effect, one way or the other,
someone figured out ways to clean P&G’s coffers of
$400 million in a year or so on the development and
introduction of this home clothing care kit.
In reality, of course, Dryel, which sold
for $9.95, and soaked up precious shelf space in the
nation’s supermarkets and discount stores, didn’t
clean clothes. It just made them smell better. Now, isn’t
that exactly what the average consumer wants? Perfumed dirty
clothes.
What marketing research revealed this
enlightening insight?
After a year, P&G evidently smelled
something — something rotten — and backed away from
Dryel. P&G is a marketing company. A good one by any
standard. So, why did this happen?
Unfortunately, P&G doesn’t hold
the patent on stupidity. The 2001 holiday selling season saw an
astounding number of large specialty retailers lining up like
lemmings to sell sweaters, all of which looked alike except for
different “designer” logos. Sweaters were the
feeding frenzy.
And where were the marketers? At the head
of the line urging the store buyers on?
In the end, of course, the retailers were
awash in sweaters. And they were still up to their eyeballs in
sweater inventory even after taking up to 70 percent discounts
early in the Christmas selling season.
Is it fair to blame marketers for these
horrendous mistakes? Perhaps they advised against introducing
Dryel. Perhaps GM’s marketers were not involved in the
development of the Pontiac Aztec and the Buick Rendezvous.
Let’s hope that their loud protests were ignored.
There are more examples, of course. The
first is the spate of home delivery services a la Webvan,
Peapod, and the like. Hundreds of millions of dollars were
swallowed up by these outfits that demonstrated an insatiable
appetite for capital. Worse yet, venture capitalists stood in
line outbidding one another to see who was going to give them
the biggest pile of money.
“Didn’t home delivery die out
when women went from being everyday housewives to job
holders?”
Isn’t it a little strange that no
one asked this question? Isn’t it bizarre to think that
no one researched the history of home delivery? Is it possible
that no one listened to the contrary views?
A marketer was called in by the head of a
large organization and was presented with the task of marketing
a credit card to its members. At a meeting with the president a
few weeks later, he laid out reasons why he believed the
response by the membership would be minimal.
Before he finished his report, the
president was clearly agitated. Standing up, he said to the
marketer, “Do you want to do this or will I have to get
someone else?”
Three months after the credit card was
introduced, a total of 1 percent of the membership had
responded. Was the marketing at fault? The marketing manager
had pointed out in his report that the membership was older and
mostly retired, fit the profile of those who did not use credit
cards, were of a socio-economic group that might make it
difficult for them to qualify. The results supported the
marketer’s report.
It may be that the recommendations of
marketers are ignored or not even sought because marketers
sometimes shoot themselves in the foot when they make others
feel uninformed and even stupid.
Marketing is neither mysterious nor
esoteric. It’s about real-life issues. This is why
marketers need to open their doors far wider than they are
today and give up some of what may be nothing more than
nonsense.
• Branding is bull — at best. Jargon always confuses, never clarifies.
Branding is a prime example.
To call branding bull is heresy or worse.
Big names have made big bucks touting branding as the solution.
You can’t pick up a business
publication or attend a seminar without encountering
“branding.” But “creating the brand,”
“protecting the brand,” “managing the
brand,” and “branding it,” are nothing more
than high level abstractions that may make for interesting
cocktail party conversation, create a certain level of phony
superiority, and even cause a bit of excitement — but
these terms don’t mean anything.
If you want to be profound, then figure
out what’s of value to the customer — what makes
the customer’s heart go pitter-pat, not what turns you
on. Nurturing that value is serious business. Doing everything
possible to align with and then stay close to the customer
takes talent, commitment, and zeal, not jargon.
• Marketing research is often a
slight-of-hand trick. Don’t
be intimidated by anyone who attempts to dazzle you with screen
after screen of charts and countless columns of research
results. It’s rare if it means more than a good
consulting fee. The problem is that we are intimidated by
nonsense, particularly when it is passing in front of us at
breakneck speed.
The biggest con job of all comes from the
folks who provide “focus group” meeting facilities.
Of course, the major feature of research palaces is the
“viewing room” where the client, ad agency reps,
marketing managers, and assorted other executives can gather to
eat, drink, and make meaningless banter while watching those
who are being paid to voice their prejudices.
This comes to mind while watching Studs
Terkel talk about his latest book. He has been listening to and
recording the views, opinions, and experiences of just plain
people for more than half a century.
What’s the point? He listens and
learns. He has well-tuned antennae.
Much of current marketing research is a
smokescreen, carefully designed to pass the buck if something
goes wrong. It is a substitute for insight, experience, and
common sense — a tool for avoiding personal
responsibility.
• Don’t get taken in by the
“Let’s make a big splash” mentality. Far too often marketers get their jollies
from what they like to call “Wow.” They think they
are doing something when they spend lots of money to make lots
of noise. They love attacking the market with full force
— they thrive on making a big splash.
And then “pfuff.” It’s
all gone. Both the budget and the customers. Millions of
dollars were spent on advertising and promoting Dryel. Once the
budget was gone, so were the customers. So was Dryel. All that
could be found were thousands and thousands of boxes of Dryel
on supermarket shelves.
Marketing is the task of constantly
“pulling customers” closer and closer to your
company, product, or service so that they decide it is in their
best interest to do business with you. That requires keeping
your hand on the rope every minute of every day.
Nobody expressed it better than Theodore
Leavitt, the legendary marketing expert at Harvard Business
School, who pointed out that marketing is all the little,
seemingly insignificant and often bothersome things that a
company does day in and day out to attract and hold a customer.
• Put marketing ideas, strategies,
and plans to the only test. There
is always the feeling that to justify your existence it is
necessary to make the simple look complex and the easy ever so
difficult and complicated. Marketing is no exception.
But marketing is too important to permit
it to be distorted and misunderstood.
While it takes lots of skill and a
creative mind to be a good marketer, it takes just one thing to
determine if marketing is on the right track. In other words,
there is a simple, accurate — and infallible —
test. Most of all, the test is trustworthy because it places
marketing in the context of everyday experience. Here it is:
When faced with making a marketing
decision, just ask this question: Does it make sense to you?
Does it square with your experience? Is it
easily understood? Or does it make you wonder if it will work?
Does it raise questions or create doubts? If you ask questions,
do you get reasonable, common sense answers?
If the explanation you’re given
doesn’t compute, don’t do it. That’s it.
Nothing more. Marketing is about what you do every day to get
closer to the customer. It’s about making sense.
John R. Graham is president of Graham
Communications, a marketing services and sales consulting firm.
He is an author of several books, writes for a variety of
publications and speaks at and association meetings. He can be
contacted by phone at (617) 328-0069 or by e-mail at j_graham@grahamcomm.com). The company's web site is www.grahamcomm.com.
