Re: Word of Mouth for Boring Products

As mentioned earlier, I’m hosting a lunch-time networking session at this week’s WOMMA Conference (New Orleans). Another issue we will be addressing is generating Word-of-Mouth (WOM) for “boring products.” Select tables at the lunch session will be devising WOM marketing plans for a Gauze Pads brand. Can’t get more “boring” than gauze pads, can ya!!??!!

However, I agree with Eric Ryan, Method Home co-founder, who says, “There is no such thing as dull product categories, only dull products.” That said, it'll be challenging — but not impossible — to WOM-ify Gauze Pads.

If you aren’t attending the conference and want to play along at home, you can. Read below and post your thoughts in the comments section. I’ll share and compare what WOMMA Conference attendees came up with to WOM-ify Gauze Pads.

EXERCISE:
• Create a company that thinks different about the Gauze Pads product category.
• Give the company a name and design its breakthrough Gauze Pad product.
• Compellingly define what makes your Gauze Pads different from any other competing product in its category.
• Develop a basic marketing campaign that will introduce these remarkable Gauze Pads so that consumers will remark about them to all their friends and family.
• Be prudent. Your marketing budget is practically non-existent. You are a start-up after all.

Comments

[Stephen Denny]

CRASH-PADS(TM)
For your unspeakably hideous pavement interactions.

Gauze pads are not boring. They are sexy. CRASH-PADS(TM) are not "band aids". They are not sissy things to cover boo boos. They are "monuments to moments gone wrong" (tm). Each tells a story. Each, an authentic moment of truth where asphalt met with skin.

Product specs:
. Use of color: pain is not white. Available in desert or jungle camo, Bond villains, mainstream journalists, Ambassador Duke (from Doonesbury? Remember?); pictures of ex-significant others available through the website.
. Can be applied with one hand -- slap it on without help. You fell by yourself, you can get up by yourself, give yourself first aid, reload and keep firing by yourself.
. SKU management: available in gauze pad bandolero (only at Costco).

Marketing:
. Any Iraqi Freedom veteran who has posted to YouTube gets a free master carton. Likewise all members of Blackwater Security currently in rotation. Call this our "Air Jordan" strategy.
. Iggy Pop should get some, too. Call it branding.
. 50 Cent, Snoop, and Don Imus, likewise, should all get samples.
. PR: anyone who has done something that is the moral equivalent of planting themselves face first on the pavement should be sent a master carton and asked to wear them on screen; support with "asphalt facial of the week" on website and blog. With a presidential election coming up, you might want the factory to be ramping up.

I think we're in good shape, JM.

Regards.

[johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy)]

Stephen ... love the creativity! You’ve taken a “brand-aid” approach to wom-ifying Gauze Pads.

The session at WOMMA was also just as creative. One group offered up a cause-related marketing plan to spread the word. Of course the program was called: GAUZE for a CAUSE! (Nice.)

Another group offered up very compelling ideas on how to create a community of Gauze Pad users. This online community would share best practice uses/advice as well as alternative ways to use Gauze Pads. Good stuff.

[andrewmbode]

Haha, I want to play!

Maybe not as jazzy, but I instantly thought of going with product innovation. Can you lay a 1/3 inch sticky around the gauze itself, kind of like a post-it note? Make it the best sticky stuff possible!
Then wrap the packaging in something like the newer, sleeker Kleenex packaging.
Offer a version pre-soaked in a bit of neosporin or generic substitute (which by the way, after a recent injury and results I have become a lifetime advocate of)
Try to get them to show up in the lives of Moms who intersect the PTA demographic and country club demographic.
Definitely prep the market with a healthy dose of product donation to high traffic soccer and softball fields.
Match with product placement in sports-oriented stores like Academy (right next to the gloves, etc, not just buried in the pharmacy aisle at Albertson's)
Then FOCUS everything (actual product, packaging, and brand, messaging, etc) on speed and simplicity.
Unfortunately I don't know too much about the gauze and stickiness design world, but if you can actually deliver on these things, you have a great angle to work the "interest meets jealousy" button.

TRANSLATION: if a Mom sees another Mom solve a problem for a child faster and better than they had previously solved the same problem for their own child, the word of mouth ought to take care of itself.

Sure, just "cool factor" can work great in WOM, but we end up talking about and acting on what actually works better, what has an impact on our lives, with more passion.

Bonus: sell them contained in a good quality ziploc bag, not a cardboard or non-waterproof metallic box.

OK, brand. How about "Injury Timeout"

If your budget is tiny, scale the geography way down and get it right, esp the product. Again if the product and promise equate, we ought to be able to get the SuperMom reaction to work. If the product really works, kick in the social media tools. Low, low cost. I think YouTube videos of mild but hilarious injuries would work nicely. And if my personal experience is any indication, nobody forwards emails more than Moms and Grandmoms with kids, especially if it's related to kids.

Cheers,
Andrew