After having met the client on Tuesday, I can say I am really excited about the project. We met Jordan, who acts as the ‘Consumer Market Knowledge’ across categories at P&G. She was really helpful and patient enough to spend considerable time answering all our questions. She gave us a broader understanding of the category goals and the problems they face. We are slated to meet Heather, who is the BFO (those that plan for 3-5 years ahead) for P&G Fem-Care this week, and I can’t wait to get more in depth category knowledge from her. The problem that the client is facing currently is that they are known for only one core benefit they provide and they want their consumers to see that the brand provides the other core benefits too that looked for. This project is interesting because there are many ways to approach this problem. One interesting method that the client was interested in was to look at other categories where the brand is successfully able to overcome the perception of offering just one benefit when they had a much broader offering and see if we can apply that to our product (sanitary pads).
I spent a lot of time speaking to my female friends trying to understand their beliefs, attitudes and behaviors towards sanitary pads. After speaking to them, I get this impression that in the beginning they usually use the brand/product that their mother’s generally recommend/use. It is in the late teens that they start understanding the needs of their body and start experimenting with various brands and types of sanitary pads. And, once they find a sanitary pad that they are happy with, they become fiercely loyal users of that brand/product and only a strong recommendation preferably word-of-mouth, can even interest them into trying a new brand/product. Interestingly in this category, most of the trials and testings happen when they borrow sanitary pads from their friends, and this is where they either switch to a new brand/product or become more loyal to their existing brand/product. Also, most of the friends I spoke to said that the packaging of the whole product made little to no difference in their purchase decision, but, the packaging of the individuals pads inside made some difference.
Coming back to issue that our client has, there are many questions I want answered. Although, we met Jordan, who was able to provide us with broader knowledge of the Fem-care consumer market – we need a more in depth understanding of the sanitary pad market before moving ahead with the project. I feel the meeting with Heather (among those people who are extremely busy and difficult to meet with often) is extremely vital and asking relevant and important questions will shape what comes of this project. Currently, the client differentiates itself by using the category variable and also scores extremely high on it, however, the brand doesn’t talk about any dynamic variable. I find this as a huge opportunity for the product to be re-positioned around a dynamic variable. While researching on other categories that faced a similar issue, I came across the problem that Discovery channel faced. Until recently, Discovery channel was only known for their stunning wildlife shows and documentaries, when in reality they had a much broader offering. Through a series of advertising and marketing campaigns, Discovery channel re-positioned itself from a 'wildlife documentary channel' to a channel that 'focuses on everything of human interest'. In this process they also changed their tagline from 'Think again. Dare to explore' to 'Live Curious'. What was particularly interesting is – the advertisements that Discovery channel used during this campaign were the same ones they had previously used albeit with subtle modifications.
According to me, the first thing we should do is to conduct in-depth interviews and use projective techniques, a marketing research tool, to find which vectors are truly important for the consumers and their meaning of these vectors (focus on consumer verbiage/language). We could also use ZMET (metaphor elicitation technique), to understand the consumers’ deepest attitudes, beliefs and behavior – both conscious and subconscious – towards sanitary pads and on the topic of menstruation.
Unfortunately, one of my team-members is away to attend her friend’s wedding and won’t be available for a couple of weeks. I am, however, positive that we can touch base with her over Skype to discuss our project and pen down our plan of action/charter. For now, I can say that exciting times lie ahead – it’s time to HUSTLE!
Recent Comments