Let me give you two examples:
The mosquito season is the most important thing in the world for insecticide manufacturers. Most people buy a can of insecticide the moment they see a surge in the number of mosquitoes. The second can is usually the same brand as the first and most people buy only between three and four cans per year. So you can see the problem: miss the first can and you’ve shot 50 percent of your share of market down the tubes. Some years back S.C. Johnson told us that they would be late in Brazil with the launch of Raid Max. We created a radio testimonial campaign with live reads, which asked women to “please hold off on buying your insecticide until we launch Raid Max.” Just that simple message read convincingly by a well-known DJ held back the buying of enough insecticide in the country to allow us to launch Raid Max properly and make our numbers.
For the Plenitude (a L’Oreal brand) in Mexico, the French-originated campaign was lacking on two key aspects: the target definition was off (the international campaign targeted women 25+ in the upper and mid upper segments) and it was not resonating with the real buyer in Mexico. We first did the obvious thing: redefining the target to be women 18-34 in the mid-and-lower segments (a huge segment in Mexico) and then created advertorials based on the No. 1 reasons these women were giving us when buying Plenitude: “I don’t want to look like my mom at 30.” The advertorials were, of course adapted to each magazine. The result: No. 2 brand in the country in less than a year with 19.2 percent SOM
So, lesson No. 1: It’s the message.
