Stretching a brand to its limit
Born in 1955, Crest was the first fluoride toothpaste brand. Up until that point, the Colgate brand had a stranglehold on the market.
However, Crest’s parent company Procter & Gamble realized that Colgate had a weakness. No fluoride. This meant more cavities and more tooth decay.
Furthermore, Crest could back up miraculous cavity-reducing claims with extensive research, which had been conducted by Procter & Gamble scientists at Indiana University. Endorsements by the American Dental Association, which commended Crest’s ‘effective decay-preventing qualities,’ helped the brand gain ground on its rival, Colgate, and eventually saw it slide ahead.
However, the 1980s witnessed the fragmentation of the toothpaste market.
All of a sudden, consumers were presented with an array of choice as new brands emerged. There were brands for smokers, tooth-whitening brands, mint-gel brands, baking-soda brands, natural brands, children’s brands, flavoured brands, brands for the elderly. Furthermore, fluoride was no longer such a big selling point. After all, in many parts of Europe and the United States it was now included in tap water. Cavities weren’t the issue they were in the 1950s.
Gradually, Crest launched more and more varieties. Most significantly, it released a tartar control toothpaste in 1985. Although this was the first toothpaste of its kind on the market it didn’t have the same impact as the introduction of fluoride had 30 years previously. One of the reasons for this was that Crest now had so many different toothpastes. The anti-tartar variety was just one Crest among many. Also, Colgate was quick off the mark. Not
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only did it launch its own tartar-control toothpaste, but it also started work on a toothpaste which would cover all of the perceived tooth care needs.
Whereas Crest kept on offering new variations on the same theme, thereby confusing the toothpaste-buying public, Colgate launched Colgate Total.
This came with fluoride, tartar control and gum protection. In other words it provided everything within one product. Soon after its triumphant launch, Colgate was back on top of the market and eating into Crest’s sales.
So what happened? Why wasn’t Crest able to offer a Crest Total or Crest Complete before its rival’s product?
There are a number of possible reasons, and one relates to Procter &
Gamble’s method of branding. Procter & Gamble’s brand strategy in the 1980s seemed to be: why launch one product, when 50 will do? Indeed, at one point there were 52 versions of Crest on the market. The belief was: the higher number of sub-brands the higher number of sales. So why risk threatening this scenario by telling consumers there is now one Crest toothpaste which caters for all their dental requirements?
However, increased choice equalled increased confusion. As a result, Crest lost market share. Indeed, true to the law of diminishing returns the more products Crest had on offer, the lower its overall share of the market. When Crest had one product, its share soared above 50 per cent. By the time Crest had 38 products it was down to 36 per cent of the market. As soon as there were 50 Crest toothpastes, its market share dipped to 25 per cent and fell behind Colgate.
These problems were not unique to the Crest brand. For instance, Procter
& Gamble had seen the same thing happen with its Head & Shoulders brand.
Did consumers really need 31 varieties of anti-dandruff shampoo?
When the marketing strategy firm Ries & Ries went to work for Crest, they identified this problem. In The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding Al and Laura Ries recount the experience:
When we worked for Crest, the marketing manager asked us, ‘Crest has thirty-eight stock-keeping units. Do you think that’s too many or too few?’
‘How many teeth do you have in your mouth?’ we asked.
‘Thirty-two.’
‘No toothpaste should have more stock-keeping units than teeth in one’s mouth,’ we responded.
Although for some time Procter & Gamble kept on repeating the misguided Crest strategy – launch more brands, lose more market share – the company eventually decided to tackle the problem it had created.
An article entitled, ‘Make it Simple’, Business Week magazine (9 September 1996) summed up the decisive shift within Procter & Gamble: ‘After decades of spinning out new-and-improved this, lemon-freshened that, and extra- jumbo-size the other thing, Procter & Gamble has decided that it sells too many different kinds of stuff. Now it has started to do the unthinkable: it’s cutting back. Procter’s product roster is a third shorter today than it was at the start of the decade.’
Before it cut the number of Crest products, Procter & Gamble trimmed back on hair care. Having slashed the number of its hair care items in half it saw an increase in sales. However, according to Procter & Gamble’s chief executive of hair care Robert S Matteucci, the strategy was unpopular at first:
‘The moves met some resistance from Procter & Gamble’s brand honchos who thought, “Oh my God, we’re going to lose sales because we’re going to have fewer items,”’ he said at the time the decision to trim back was made. ‘There’s a huge scepticism that this is the right thing to do, and that it’s doable.’
As well as reducing the number of Crest toothpaste varieties, Procter &
Gamble also altered the Crest package design to make it simpler to find your favourite version of the product. The move was considered an intelligent one among marketing experts. In a 1998 Ithaca American Demographics survey, Marcia Mogelonsky applauded the new strategy: ‘This reduces the number of extraneous sizes, flavours, and other variants, making it easier for con
sumers to find what they want. At the same time, the manufacturer can have more of its allotted space in the store filled with its best-selling products.
Shoppers have less choice, but they are less confused, and the manufacturer makes more money.’
However, competition remains tough. Not only from Colgate, but also Aquafresh, Mentadent, Arm and Hammer, Sensodyne and own-brand ranges such as those produced by the UK chemist Boots.
Although Procter & Gamble has simplified the Crest range to some degree, and although sales have improved, some believe it isn’t enough to usurp Colgate. Furthermore, although Procter & Gamble has honed its range, some critics claim that Crest’s brand identity is still not sharp enough and
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that it has neglected its scientific origins. For instance, in his book Big Brands, Big Trouble, Jack Trout makes the following observation:
First and foremost, Crest should always be on the serious, therapeutic side of the toothpaste market. That’s where they are in the minds of their prospects. No mouthwash, no whitening, only serious tooth care technology. The natural evolution of Crest would be to move from
‘cavity prevention’ to becoming the ‘pioneer in tooth care’. Unfortu
nately, they never quite saw this as a way to go. They continued to tinker with different forms of Crest.
The fact that Procter & Gamble hasn’t always been focusing on tooth decay has meant that it has inevitably suffered from something even worse: brand decay. Unless the company can once again take control of the scientific high ground and provide consumers with a single, consistent message (assisted with a tightly-focused range), Colgate will have won the battle by more than the skin of its teeth.
Lessons from Crest
� Don’t confuse the customer. Procter & Gamble now realize that simplicity is the key to reassuring shoppers. ‘It’s mind-boggling how difficult we’ve made it for them over the years,’ admitted Procter & Gamble’s president Durk I Jager to Business Week magazine.
� Don’t offer too many products. Just 7.6 per cent of all personal care and household products account for 84.5 per cent of sales, according to research by the consulting firm Kurt Salmon Associates. The same research discovered that almost a quarter of the products in a typical supermarket sell fewer than one unit a month.
� Remove product duplicates. Another study, published by William Bishop Consulting, found that when duplicative items were removed, 80 per cent of consumers saw no difference.
� Be transparent. Brands should aim for ‘transparency’. In other words, they should make the choice on offer completely clear.
� Remember your heritage. ‘Never lose your corporate memory,’ advises Jack Trout in Big Brands, Big Trouble. Crest suffered from brand amnesia by failing to replicate the success of its ‘Triumph Over Tartar’ campaign of the 1950s.