Part of what makes a generic product generic, besides its low cost, is a generic name. For example, here's the industrial-sized tub of hand soap I have in my bathroom right now:
Technically, the product is called Lucky Premium Liquid Hand Soap, though my eye is drawn first towards the red strip that says PREMIUM, then to Liquid Hand Soap, which gets the biggest font size on the bottle. If I'm in a super market or convenience store, being assaulted on all sides by shoppers who know exactly what they're looking for and where it is, all my frightened mind sees is PREMIUM Liquid Hand Soap.
Could you do anything less to distinguish your product than name it PREMIUM Liquid Hand Soap?
Even if I somehow spot the word Lucky, it means nothing to me. Though I don't have access to a corpus right now, I'm willing to bet that the word "lucky" appears quite frequently in the English language. There's nothing unique about it. And there's certainly nothing lucky about soap. Maybe that kind of shit flies in China, but here in the US of A we know a man makes his own soap luck through sheer force of will and dishonest accounting practices.
But I like you, Lucky brand PREMIUM Hand Soap. You're cheap, you come in a big bottle so I don't run out of you quickly, and after using you my hands are much cleaner than they were before. Since I like you, I'm going to give you some free advice.
Both your name and label are terrible misfires in the branding department. Just because you don't want to spend any money on package design or genetically engineered, autism-curing additives, doesn't mean you can't do anything to separate yourself from the pack. There are other low cost soaps out there. Why should I pick yours? Even if I pick your soap once by chance and like it, how am I going to remember it the next time I realize I need soap while I'm buying Bud Light at Duane Reade?
So here's what you do, Lucky brand PREMIUM Hand Soap. First, cut out all the bullshit. Nobody is buying your soap because of the pretty flowers on the bottle and we couldn't care less about making sure our toddlers get their stubby, organic apple sauce-covered fingers slathered with Vitamin E during the washing process.
We're buying generic soap. We don't worry about those kinds of things. All we need are two pieces of information. The first is that this product is indeed hand soap. I have as hard a time getting dish soap off my hands as a tearful Ecuadorian veterinarian has getting oil off a sea otter with a tooth brush. It keeps getting thinner and thinner but never, ever goes away. I want to avoid making this horrible mistake, so put the words HAND SOAP on there, and put 'em on there BIG.
The only other thing I need to know is the name. If I like your soap, I will come back for it based on the name. But if you have a name like Lucky PREMIUM Liquid Hand Soap, I'll never remember it.
Why not go for something weird that I will never forget? Something like BADONGOS, FRUNCHKIES, or GLYMPTON. Who's going to forget GLYMPTON?
If these names sort of sound like something else, even better. BADONGOS makes me thing of bongos, which makes me think of Howard Stern's Butt Bongos, a VHS tape belonging to a friend's Dad that we found hidden in his kitchen cabinets in fifth grade.
INSTANT MNEMONIC DEVICE!
GLYMPTON makes me think of George Plimpton, and FRUNCHKIES makes me think of munchies or french fries or french kisses.
When I see these products I think, "is that some sort of veiled sexual reference? Is somebody in the marketing department a Plimpton fan? A fast food junkie?"
All these thoughts lead me to believe that somebody with a soul might be working at these companies. Hmm, maybe the GLYMPTON guys aren't an evil soap conglomerate that fires their employees after they lose limbs in tragic soap mining accidents after all
Of course, GLYMPTON is exactly that kind of company, but I've been tricked into thinking they might be quirky and/or considerate to their employees. That's all the quasi-information I need to make a purchase.
Bonus points if the names look sort of funny. There's something about FRUNCHKIES that just ain't right, and you'd be drawn to it right away on a shelf with lots of otherwise identical products.
That's my advice to you, Lucky brand PREMIUM Hand Soap. Junk the bullshit on the label and pick a cool name like BADONGOS. Your soap miners will thank you when you give them all 10% cost of living adjustments in January.
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1 comments:
Yes, excellent points all, but what does it smell like? ;)
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