Marketing Genius from Maple Creative

HOME

Marketing tips, observations & philosophy, plus a few rants and random musings - from those who practice, preach and teach marketing, research, advertising, public relations and business strategy.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Creating a Niche - Toothpaste

With few, if any exceptions, every human in the developed, civilized world has his or her brand of toothpaste. What's yours?

I've been a Mentadent man for about the past 15 years. It's a happy marriage. I am not looking. And I'll bet you are not giving much, if any, thought to switching your brand of toothpaste.

Given such market conditions, how does a consumer products company sell more toothpaste?

They have to create a niche. And, out of the nothingness comes "Night Time Toothpaste."

I didn't think I needed a night time toothpaste. But Crest thought I did.

Crest didn't set out to convince me to drop my regular (i.e., daytime) brand of toothpaste. They did not attempt to out-mint or out-whiten the competition. No, they totally avoided the notion of competing along the same tired, old "battle" lines.

And indeed, that was a wise marketing decision, because I would not have switched ... and would not have done anything new. Instead, they created this new category of night time toothpaste. It's a whole new space, really.

Crest caught me off guard. I thought, Maybe I do, in fact, need a night time option. So the other day at the supermarket, I purchased a tube of Crest Night Time Toothpaste. I'm giving it a trial on the pearly white for a couple of weeks. We'll see how it goes. If just one half of one-percent of Americans do what I've done, Crest will sell a million-plus tubes of its new product. And that's a start. Those are incremental sales for Crest, in an otherwise stalemate market.

Kudos to the toothpaste marketing geniuses for creatively finding a niche and filling it!

Labels: , , , , , ,

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I can't believe it took them so long to come out with one!

9:22 PM

 
Blogger Skip Lineberg said...

Angus,

Thanks for joining the conversation! I appreciate your comment.

Skip

12:42 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Is that so? so long...

9:02 PM

 
Blogger Skip Lineberg said...

Locksmith-

Thanks for your comment. Care to elaborate?

Skip

2:59 PM

 

Post a Comment

<< Home