AS I SEE IT
BY MARIANNE HERON
Isn’t there great comfort in familiar everyday things? But sometimes products change disconcertingly, take on a new format or disappear from the shelves altogether. There have been questions recently around an iconic Irish product.
Kerrygold Butter, a favourite at home, seems to have changed I think, so do other consumers; change to a paler colour, more spreadablity and more waxy in texture have been mentioned. Ornua Co-operative, brand owners don’t agree, reportedly saying the formula is the same and that any variations are due to the time of year and the cows’ grass diet at pasture.
Why would anyone want to change a successful product anyway? Kerrygold, dearer than competing butters. is the top brand in Ireland and on the international market where sales in the US alone topped $1Bn last year.
“Changes in formulation of products might be due to legislation and the need to meet requirements,” says Shane McGonigle, CEO of the Marketing Institute of Ireland, the representative body for the marketing industry. Purchaser sentiment, for instance, like turning away from a product because it’s perceived as being too fattening, can be another influence. “But none of these changes would be made without a considerable amount of research. The trinity in marketing has three Cs: the company’s brand, the consumer and the competition,” says McGonigle. Having a recognised brand which is valued by the consumer ahead of competition is a winning formula.
Marketing guru and life coach Robin Fisher Roffer spent more than 30 years in the US shaping big-name brands, and says you can use those same principles to reinvent your life. She talks about a holy trinity of branding – consistency, clarity, and authenticity. Sounds a bit of a tall order for personal reinvention but products like Heinz Baked Beans and Kellogg’s Cornflakes fit the bill on all three counts.
Despite marketing research there have been a few spectacular product failures over the years, even for some of the best known of brands. Remember Guinness Light back in the ‘70s? It was launched with the slogan “they said it couldn’t be done”. Indeed, it couldn’t. Traditional pint drinkers considered it unmanly. Times change though, and Guinness 0.0 is gaining traction in a market where there is consumer thirst for alcohol-free drinks.
Coca Cola changed the formulation to’ a better Coke’ in the 80s, but consumers didn’t want a better Coke, they wanted the old one back.
Fashion accounts for change too. How often do we girls find a favourite colour in a lipstick brand is no longer being made; that jeans suddenly have barrel legs; or that you can have any colour eyeliner as long as it is black?
Emotion comes into the choices we make also and brand preferences come into every facet of our lives, McGonigle points out, from politics to what we wear.
Asked what she wore in bed Marilyn Munroe once answered: “Chanel No 5.”. The perfume remains as popular as ever. But the star’s favourite skin care products (mine too) Pond’s Cleansing and Vanishing creams are well, vanishing. Started a century and a half ago, Ponds launched Vanishing cream in 1904 followed by Cold Cream, one for day skin care the other for night time, a revolutionary idea at the time. The firm used celebrity promotion with stars like Munroe and here in Ireland sculptor Hilary Heron endorsed the product in print.
Cheseborough Ponds were taken over by Unilever in the 1980s. Now skin care products bearing the Ponds label in a range of different formulas from the original creams are made in Spain. The redesigned packaging also bears the label of a UK marketing company Sensogreen which offers strategies for brand growth and distributes personal care brands.
Their web site states: “Companies which have mature brands often need greater focus in order not to lose their place in the market.”
A bit like errant husbands who trade in partners for a younger model. it seems that mature Ponds products are being shouldered out by marketing tactics. Henry Ford, creator of the Model T, is said to have remarked:“If I asked customers what they want they would say a faster horse.”
Marketing executives are partly about creating new product ideas before consumers know they want them.
Fine, but maybe the customer is right to stick with established favourites too.
