My son and I were watching the ads at the movies a few days ago and one came on for a brand of multi-coloured tampons. Later he mentioned the abject pointlessness of this whole idea. The woman takes the tampon out of the box (presumably in private), inserts it where required (again in private) and after it has served its purpose removes it (privately) and disposes of it (probably without fanfare). No woman has shown either of us her collection of coloured tampons so he asked me what is the point - why make them in anything but white.
The best I could surmise was that someone in marketing had said, “Hey if we make them coloured, we can make a series of fast, trippy youth oriented ads for our tampons.”
Someone may have said, “But no-one buys them for their colour.”
But our marketing guy said, “Who cares? It gives us a chance at what I call ‘pointless differentiation’ - we can make ourselves stand alone.”
My questions are - is my theory of “pointless differentiation” valid?
First, nothing succeeds like success–if women buy these, then the differentiation will not be pointless. It means that the customer saw the point. Maybe some women will actually like the idea of the colors, makes the whole process seem less clinical. BTW if you are not wearing white jockey shorts to work every day then perhaps you can explain the point of that.
Second, a key goal of marketing is to differentiate your product to make people think it is really better in some way, or sometimes just to get more attention. If your product is exactly like another then you descend into price competition. Sometimes the differentiation is not substantive.
Well yeah, that is the whole point of my question. It clearly isn’t better that they are coloured, so all the colour achieves is an excuse for attention. So is this a commonplace or not?
And I think your non-white jockeys almost qualify except I hope that some hot woman will see mine and there is always the ubiquitous accident.
Hold up. Are you saying the tampon itself is colored, or the packaging is?
My tampons come in colored packaging because there’s 3 different kinds. Light, medium and heavy. They’re color coded for my convenience, not someone else’s eye
Also, I think it’s Tampax that makes a little “pocket sized” tampon, which has solid-colored packaging (one color for each size). As they show in ad the colored packaging makes it look more discreet so when you pass it to your classmate or leave it on some guy’s nighstand, it doesn’t scream “tampon.” Regular-sized Tampax tampons have “TAMPAX” stamped all across the package. So in this case, the color-coded packaging IS for someone else’s eyes.
So you guys might be mis-interpreting the need to advertise colors in tampons - they may be talking about the packaging, which is something that women would be interested in knowing and may work into the buying decision.
Or, they may have come out with colored tampons. I could be wrong.
Kind of a moot question for me, since I’m on Depo (Yah Depo!!) and don’t need the product. I can understand different colored packaging, but the idea of different colored tampons would work the opposite for me - I don’t want any unnecessary dyes, chemicals, etc. hanging around my girly bits.
a major issue in marketing is getting exposure for your product, with lots and lots of shelf space. Lots of products come in different colors for no logical reason, except that it gives the manufacturer an extra row of his product on the shelf.
Kitchen detergents, soaps, air fresheners, etc–all come in a huge variety of different aromas, and different colors. It isn’t the aroma that’s important , it’s the color of the label.Each color gets its own row on the shelf, and more display space for the company’s logo.
cite: a friend who paid for college (business student) working as a “marketing agent” for a big company. His job was to visit supermarkets and make sure that his company’s products were displayed properly on the shelf.
I was looking at drugs in Costco last week and noticed that they carry both generic Advil (200 mg Ibuprofin) and generic Motrin (200 mg Ibuprofin). The only difference is the shape of the tablet (small brownish disc-shaped tablet for the “advil” and white caplet for the “motrin”.
Okay, I can see where someone who is dedicated to one brand or another might grab for the package that is the closer approximation of their preferred painkiller…
But then I noticed that they carried both Excedrin Extra Strength (250 mg Acetaminophen, 250 mg Aspirin, 65 mg Caffeine) and Excedrine Migraine (250 mg Acetaminophen, 250 mg Aspirin, 65 mg Caffeine).
???
Does spending the extra money on a second line of packaging really pay off in increased sales?
