I don’t want to do a blog category on marketing genius, but I’m afraid it’s come up again here.
Partly because we have a good friend who’s a P&G baby, partly because P&G supports Upromise, but mostly (and I really do mean mostly) because it’s cheap, we buy “Joy“dishwashing liquid.
First off, I think “Joy” is an odd name for dishwashing liquid. Expecting a chuckle of support and a comment like “Yeah, why don’t they call it ‘kleenzgud’?” from Carolyn, I mentioned this to her. Instead, she said, “I think it’s a perfectly fine name! What would you have them call it? Drudgery?”
Name aside, as I’m the one most often doing the dishes, I happen to read the bottle of Joy because it’s in front of me. After all, once you can read, it’s impossible not to read — see this page on the Stroop effect. The bottle is far enough away (or my eyes are bad enough), that I can’t read the smaller print. Just the big stuff. So, for the past several weeks, I’ve been looking at this bottle where the large print text is “Droppy has a secret!”, and there’s a drawn picture of a drop with arms, legs, a big smile, and sparkling clean dark sunglasses.
And EVERY time I see that, I think to myself “WHO THE FUCK CARES?” A cartoon product mascot has a secret. I could imagine a time in Sam’s life when she might actually want to know the secret held by a cartoon product mascot — even a shady one who’s eyes you can’t see. But I don’t imagine that she’ll be making purchasing decisions about dishwashing liquid at that point (unless I’m very, very lucky!)
I recently actually looked at the bottle as I picked it up and guess what the small type is? It’s Droppy’s “secret!” Someone needs to tell the little guy that if you put something on a bottle in every grocery store in the nation (and probably thousands or more grocery stores not in the nation), it’s not so much a secret any more!
Now, if Snagglepuss had a secret…