Unilever, P&G, Henkel Adjust Products to Suit Cultural Preferences -- and Washing Temperatures
BATAVIA, Ohio (AdAge.com) -- Every half hour 7 million people in the world wash their clothes with Unilever products, and 6 million of them do so by hand.
That rather jarring statistic, courtesy of Unilever Chief Marketing and Communications Officer Keith Weed, helps explain Unilever's exit from North American laundry a few years ago: The biggest growth markets are where people are dreaming of moving up from hand washing to their first hand-cranked or semi-automatic washing machine, or are looking for lower-suds products or rinse additives that will let them make fewer or shorter trips to the well or river.
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'Nintendo kids'
Europe is embroiled in a new sort of cold war as the major laundry players launch a range of products promising better performance from cold-water washing, most recently Procter & Gamble Co.'s Ariel gel with Actilift. By contrast, in India, P&G and Unilever are in more of a hot war combining price cuts and competitive advertising claims, with both sides having had to pare back or scrap ads under court order in recent months.
Marketers do seek to capitalize on some global trends and attitudes, such as a preference for strong floral fragrances that spans southern Europe, Latin America and Asian markets. But even in broad trends, the world is often moving in opposite directions at once. For example, most people in the U.S. and northern Europe prefer lighter fragrances their southern peers would find too watered down -- or as having no scent at all.
In developing markets, the combination of warm temperatures, sweat and heavy physical labor create a need for powerful washing and stain removal, with much of the power supplied by elbow grease. Compare that to the U.S., where Eric Schwartz, VP-laundry marketing for Henkel U.S., identifies a segment he calls "Nintendo Kids." They're the growing number of youths who spend more time indoors playing video games than outdoors getting grass and ground-in dirt stains that generate challenging laundry problems.
For those challenges, Unilever markets four of its regional brands -- Persil, Skip, Via and Omo -- under a common "Dirt is Good" logo and positioning. For more premium brands, dirt is indeed good, but it's also good for kids, as Randy Quinn, exec VP global laundry for Unilever sees it.
"The proposition is based on the fundamental insight that giving children the ability to get dirty and experience life as part of the growing up process is healthy for their development and gives moms the freedom to say, 'I can let my children get dirty without worrying about whether I can get clothes clean,'" he said.
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Posted by Jack Neff on 06.14.10
From: http://adage.com/globalnews/article?article_id=144398
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