It's called "brand extension" and it's a little like how a publicly held corporation uses a stock split to increase prices - take a well defined product and bring a variant of that product to the market place.
It works like this:
Camaro. Camaro Z28. Camaro Z28 IROC. Camaro Z28 IROC convertible. Camaro Z28 IROC convertible with pickles.
He he he. "...with pickles." I'm laughin.
ANYway - "brand extensions" can be a great way to build awareness of a product, steal market share from a competive product or even grow one's own category. I learned a lesson in succesful brand extension when working on Gummy Bears a looooong time ago. The guy who brought Gummy Bears to the USA took the same sugary glop used to make the little mutated bears and poured them into molds to make little mutated dinosaurs. Same gummy. Different shape. More sales.
It seems the MPs at Proctor & Gamble (Marketing People) have decided to have a crack at Brand Extension Game (BEG) with their venerable brand, Ivory Soap.
They made it green. With "aloe."
The accompanying graphic is from the back of a bar of this new "GREEN" Ivory soap.
The green is authentic - the bar in its entirety was plopped onto the scanner. Yeah, Ivory is supposed to be WHITE.
Smartly, the MPs decided to keep the name "IVORY" and not call it "GREEN." Actually, it's more "Mint" or "Sour Apple" - all of which suck as a brand name for soap.
(time-out; note-to-self - "mint" might actually make a good name for a soap, but the packaging would have to be perfect...)
ANYway...
This isn't so much a post about Ivory's choice of color/name as it is their choice of packaging. Each GREEN bar of IVORY has a different (actually 5 so far) zen-ish phrase printed on it. It's designed (presumably) to provoke thought and life-improving introspection.
And here's the rub - if you don't want to read the quote for yourself it's:
"Complicating life is easy.
The genius is in the simple things."
What can be more life-complicating than pausing for religion while opening a bar of SOAP!??!
Maybe this is a product for power-packed people who live life by the mili-second - you know, the people who take their cell phones and Daytimer's in to pee...
Again -
"Complicating life is easy.
The genius is in the simple things."
YES! YES! COMPLICATING LIFE IS EASY! IT'S AS EASY AS PUTTING CHURCH ON A SOAP WRAPPER!
THE GENIUS...I REPEAT...THE GENIUS WAS IN...
IVORY - 99.9% PURE.
btw - I scanned more wrappers. More later.
