Charmin Marketing Strategies Essay Example

2005). Mr.

Whipple, played by Dick Wilson, became the third best known American following President Nixon and Billy Graham as well as becoming the most recognized face in the history of American advertising. The product awareness that resulted from this campaign is priceless and Dennis Legault, Charmin brand manager, acknowledges that Wilson deserves much of the credit for Charmin's success (Nelson, 2007). Even with Charmins past and current success with older consumers, P&G decided in 2000 that their company wanted to change the way all age groups of consumers perceived and related to Charmin. The goal was to develop some sort of hospitality marketing strategy to get the consumer to see how special the Charmin brand is.

To help accomplish that goal, P&G hired the Gigunda Group to help develop a new marketing campaign. Charmin had three specific results they wanted to achieve with this new campaign and the first goal was to take the commodity out of toilet paper and create a tissue of special value.In addition, Charmin wanted to be known as a trusted brand as well as recruit new brand-loyal customers. The last objective and most important goal were for Charmin to engage their consumers at the point of use to create a one-on-one experience that makes each person feel special. To accomplish this, Gigunda had to ask themselves how they could turn an automatic, everyday consumer decision into a thoughtful expression of family care and brand devotion.

Gigondas' answer was to create the ultimate bathroom experience in a public venue where the consumer most needs a close and clean bathroom but is least likely to find one. This ultimate bathroom experience would create the

result of engaging the consumer at the point of use. Because of this answer, the first Charminized bathroom was created and tested at the Ohio State Fair (Janes, n. d. ). The experiment was a success and as a result, all three of Charmin's goals were met as well as showing an increase in sales of 14%.

In 2001, the Charminized bathrooms expanded and made their debut at fifteen of the country's largest state fairs. The charming hospitality campaign is now referred to as Potty Palooza as well as the Red Cross of bathrooms (Spethmann, 2006) and has grown to serve over 45 million consumers and has touched over 7 million young families (Gigunda, 2006). In 2006, Charmin made the decision to extend its hospitality campaign by using the 2000 experimental Potty Palooza on a much larger scale, but the purpose of the campaign remained the same as it did in 2000.In addition to the traditional older customer, Charmin wants to create strategies to involve young adults and teenagers with their toilet paper. With this in mind, P&G combined the Potty Palooza marketing campaign with a developing project idea they refer to as a media-neutral idea in which the same campaign can be used in several different venues and relate to all age groups (Ryasam, 2007). With this media-neutral idea in mind, the animated and colorful Charmin bears were born.

Over the past eight years, they have evolved into a family that is part of all the Charmin advertising (Charmin FAQ, n. d. ). Using these two marketing strategies together, Charmin launched the first Time Square Potty Palooza campaign in 2006 in an effort to reinvent the

way consumers thought about toilet paper. This Time Square event was the main idea behind the Potty Palooza from the start, but the company first needed to test the project before spending millions of dollars on one advertising campaign (Janes, n.d. ). The objective of this restaging idea was not to build sales or promote a new product but to take the commodity out of toilet paper and bring the brand to life. Because of that objective, P&G brought the toilet paper to the people in the form of a Time Square Potty Palooza extravaganza. Twenty plush bathrooms were placed at storefronts with a large sign that read, You're in New York.

Go in Style (Spethmann, 2006). Each bathroom was individually cared for by personal attendants who cleaned and restocked products after each and every use. The Charmin Bears were present to entertain, greet, and dance with consumers. Large screen TVs had been made available to watch as well as having couches available to rest on and enjoy while warming up by the fireplace.

According to Adam Lisook, assistant brand manager for Charmin, it is important to reach the consumer when it matters the most which are in their time of need.  (Janes, n. d. ). Mr. Lisook believes that the Time Square bathrooms made consumers aware that Charmin realizes what the customers' needs are and also proves that P&G values those needs.

To emphasis that point even further, two bathroom stalls were dedicated to children and were named Lil Squirt Emergencies. Any time that you surprise and delight consumers, you build a stronger emotional connection [with the] brand, Lisook says (Janes, n. . ). More than 420,000

people from 100 countries and 50 states visited the Time Square restrooms during the 2006 holiday season (Johannes, 2007).

Over 460 million media impressions were created from the Time Square event, including several articles written in major publications and newspapers and the event even spawned many segments on nationally broadcasted shows such as Good Morning America (Janes, n. d. ). The transition is needed here. Teenagers have a considerable amount of influence on their parents' spending decisions (Kersting, 2004).

That influence is important to recognize because as a result of the Time Square bathroom campaign, Charmin made a lasting and branding impression on this young group of consumers. Countless blogs have been created and hundreds of forums have been developed in response to the Time Square Potty Palooza. In addition, the event spawned over 400 Charmin Time Square videos that were uploaded to the popular site YouTube. com (Janes, n. d. ). This internet site attracts approximately 20 million viewers a month with most of those viewers being under the age of 30. This specific age group is considered the Holy Grail age for advertisers and is the main target audience for all marketers (Ryasam, 2007). Technology has changed the way the younger generation is reached by advertisers thus forcing companies to explore more non-traditional media as a way to reach teens and young adults (Kersting, 2004). P&G is smart to experiment with its marketing strategies (Facenda, 2007).

The gamble and huge expense of the Time Square bathrooms seems to have paid off for reaching all age groups and demographics in every media form possible. The company has succeeded in taking the commodity out of toilet paper as

well as developing brand loyalty and product awareness. Because of this accomplishment, the Time Square bathroom campaign won a 2007 Pro Award for the Best Campaign Generating Brand Awareness and Trial Recruitment (Johannes, 2007). Charmin has not forgotten the children and involves them directly when creating a special Charmin experience. In 2000, the Charmin Bear was introduced as the animated character in their Call of Nature campaign that is now part of their media-neutral idea to involve all age categories with one campaign, including children.

The Call of Nature animation is now a complete family (Charmin FAQ, n. d. ). Not only are these bears cute, but they have a sense of humor to boot. Their cha-cha-cha song and dance is quite contagious among children.

Charmin also has very interesting ways to engage children at their website including a page called Meet the Bears.  Children can read about each bear in the Charmin family that includes information tidbits such as likes and dislikes, favorite foods and favorite songs as well as hobbies and life goals (Meet the bears, n. d. ).

On Charming main site children can play interactive games as well as listen to and download Charmin songs (Charmin downloads, n. d. ). This is a fun way to get the youngest members of the family involved in the Charmin brand. P&G is not immune to criticism for its efforts to brand young children. In 2003 P&G launched a children???s book set for two to four-year-olds that is based on the Charmin Bear family (Milmo, 2003).

One million copies of the book set were printed and distributed. Some say that this book set was an attempt to brand

all children at a young age, for instance, the phrase soft and comfortable is used nine times in the first story. Likewise, another story repeats the words big and strong five times (Day, 2003). P&G claims these books are a means to bring the Charmin Bears to life and into the family as well as provide a positive benefit to the family by encouraging parents to read to their children (Day, 2003).

Company executives have admitted that the publication of the book was meant to increase public knowledge of the Charmin bear (Milmo, 2003). Some children advocates claim that these books are a ploy to boost sales and because of the controversy, Christian Jenner, spokeswoman for the National Family and Parenting Association, said: This seems to be a very cynical way of using small children to get into their parents' pockets. The shadow of this sort of marketing is increasingly cast over families' lives. Small children are more sophisticated consumers than many realize and know how to recognize a brand, whatever the context.

That recognition is extremely valuable to a company and there is a very serious issue as to whether it is right to target children. (Milmo, 2003) Advertising directly to children is a highly controversial subject yet it has extremely lucrative results. In 1983, over $100 million was spent on television advertising directed at children and today's numbers show marketers spend approximately $15 billion specifically to create a branding effect on America's children (Schor, 2004).The average American child views over 100 commercials a day which computes to over 40,000 television advertisements in a year (Kunkel & Wilcox, 2004). Although $83 million seems like an excessive

amount of money to spend on one experimental advertising campaign for the purpose of reinventing toilet paper, Charmin seems to have squeezed every possible positive effect it could have gained from providing such a memorable, hands-on experience to everyone who has become Charminized.

Furthermore, Charmin re-launched the Time Square Potty Palooza in 2007 to promote their newest tissue product and now boasts a product for every tissue need as well as a product for every person. Charming marketing strategies have changed considerably from marketing to only one age group to using their media-neutral idea and including all age groups with one campaign strategy. As a result, Charmin remains the leader in toilet tissue sales and has succeeded in changing the relevance of toilet paper, and has also created new brand-loyal customers.

Reference

1. https://www.charmin.com/en-us/about-us/charmin-history