Colgate Max Fresh: Roll Out Brand Essay Example

it continually encounters stiff competition due to Crest's innovative product launches.

In August 2004, Colgate-Palmolive launched a premium toothpaste called Colgate Max Fresh (CMF) as part of its Crest Whitening Expressions (CWE) range in the United States. Promoted as an exceptional toothpaste that provides unmatched freshness, it gained substantial domestic success. This led to Colgate-Palmolive considering expanding it internationally. Nonetheless, maintaining the worldwide attraction of the brand and tailoring to distinct preferences across varied regions is a hurdle; this is a typical problem encountered when implementing global marketing tactics.

Effective worldwide marketing strategies manage commonalities to maintain a uniform message and reduce expenses, simultaneously personalizing promotions to harmonize with local cultural tastes. When determining the initial countries for marketplace entry, a firm needs to weigh the possibilities for institutional learning. To solidify the expansion of international brand value, one should be capable of understanding the origin of brand worth, establish goals for brand evolution, and allocate resources among goods.

Factors limiting the internationalization of marketing and brands, such as international consumers, shared consumer demands, cost factors (efficiency of scale), competition factors, global competition, early-bird advantage or facing competitor innovations threats, pre-existing products to maintain position, and regulatory factors (regulations, censorship, prohibition on naming competitors), must be properly assessed before developing or selecting the marketing strategy for any specific region.

Despite Colgate-Palmolive's minimal modifications to Colgate Max Fresh for the Mexican market, the Chinese counterpart of the company completely overhauled almost every feature of the product, with the exception of its unique selling point- the breath strips. These extensive alterations proved to be expensive and resulted in no profit for the product

in its initial two years in China as the costs substantially exceeded the earnings. Rather than emulating a unified marketing strategy, CP China operated as though it had acquired exclusive rights to utilize CMF's proprietary design and then constructed an entirely new marketing approach from scratch.

Utilizing the existing understanding of CFM in the U.S to measure the efficiency of the implemented marketing strategy for Colgate Max Fresh, the marketing team could gain a perspective on what strategies are fruitful and which ones fail. This would help them understand what aspects elevate the product in the perception of consumers and what efforts need to be revised for the Chinese market. Cost savings can be achieved in the marketing department by incorporating strategies that can be replicated from the U.S market to China directly. If the promotional campaign received positive feedback from the test groups, a potential saving of up to $1. 5 million could be realized.

The drawback of this method is that it restricts the possibility for cost reduction and inadequately tackles the problem related to sales revenue. Probable solutions are represented in Exhibit 13, showing that Colgate Max Fresh posted nearly $20 million in net sales against almost $30 million in total expenditures during its first year, causing a deficit of approximately $10 million. Nevertheless, an increase of about $3.5 million in sales was observed in its second year along with a decline in expenses which reduced the net loss to roughly $1.5 million. Despite any shortfall being undesirable, there was a significant reduction in costs and improvement in product visibility.

Should the product have initially received a positive response,

its influence would have been significant. For CP China, the ideal situation is to decrease costs by avoiding unnecessary alterations to their existing marketing strategy, which highlights the most appealing features of the product. By lowering expenses and increasing sales, CMF might have reached profitability in its second year or even earlier. Nonetheless, a preliminary shift in viewpoint needs consideration.

The Chinese Colgate-Palmolive oral care management appears mistrusting of the effectiveness of strategies implemented by their U.S. counterparts in China, implementing new and costly approaches for different areas of the marketing mix without prior necessity or advisability assessment. It's essential for the Corporate CP to make their Chinese team realize that, being part of a global brand, many successful features can be seamlessly transferred from one country to another.

Subsequently, the team from China is required to assess various components of Colgate Max Fresh's marketing mix. Several elements were correctly evaluated, such as the product's name and the description of the breath strips. CP China conducted thorough research to determine whether the name "Colgate Max Fresh" along with "breath strips" would resonate with the Chinese market. As it didn't translate effectively, they opted for a name change. This should be the strategy adopted for all facets of the marketing mix.

As an illustration, the primary action while evaluating ads should be to gauge their effectiveness in the United States. Alterations must be made to the advertisements if they fail to deliver satisfactory results, emphasizing characteristics that appeal to Chinese toothpaste consumers like freshness and cavity prevention. Every element must undergo assessment and any unsuccessful components should be reworked by the marketing team

based in China. The modified plans must then undergo appraisal and stacked against the original strategies.