Marketing Madness

I’ve dressed up as a lot of different things in my life, and I’m not merely referring to the various costumes I wore as a child (or adult) for Halloween (Turtles in a half-shell. Turtle Power!).  No.  Quite seriously, I’ve had to “be” some pretty crazy things over the years.  For brevity’s sake, I’ll only include in the list a woman, a 7-foot tall chicken, a cow of similar height, a Viking, a bowling ball, Carrot Top…it goes on.  And now I have the distinction of adding “Tube of Toothpaste” to the list.

As a first-year MBA student, several friends and I had the pleasure of participating in the Marketing Madness contest during Mod II.  The idea behind Marketing Madness is that you and a group of friends volunteer to serve as tradeshow marketers at an Owen Thursday Social.  The Marketing Association contacts CPG companies of all types that might be interested in sending product down to be “marketed.”  Participating companies from this past year included Mattel, Miller-Coors, L’Oreal, and Proctor & Gamble, among others.  By the luck of the draw, my team got P&G.  The product:  Crest Pro-Health Clinical line of toothpaste, mouth wash, and tooth brushes.

I hate gingivitis.  Even the word is gross (but I suppose that’s better than a word sweetly defined but horribly phonetic).  So, I was happy to be assigned a product that almost everyone can relate to.

The trouble with marketing something so commoditized is that we’ve all been there…  It’s been three months since your last toothpaste purchase.  You can’t remember off the top of your head the specific combination of brand, flavor, ingredients, and superhero-like protection that you prefer.  So you think, “What do I not want?”  Cavities.  Gingivitis.  Bad breath.  All of the above, hopefully.  So you then start to look for those key words, but they’re on every box.  And just when you’re about to give up and reduce yourself to a life of terrifying dentist visits because choosing a toothpaste was too demoralizing, the effects of marketing enter stage right.

And that’s why my group dressed as the products we were representing.  Hence, I wore a lampshade on my head and a white sheet that had been cut like a poncho.  But, a tube of toothpaste I was.  My compatriots were a toothbrush, a dentist, and a guy with really bad (fake) teeth.  Our pitch included four steps:

1. Dentist says brush teeth.
2. Apply tooth paste from tube to tooth brush.
3. Brush teeth.
4. Improve teeth and smile.

If you can imagine four adults (sort of) running through this route dressed as the actual items being used, you might think of the Three Stooges slamming into the dental version of Doogie Howser.  And you’d be right.

The fun thing was that we actually had to know our product.  While we certainly had fun with our demonstration, some people had very real questions, like have we found that using the term “clinical” allows us to charge a premium.  And that’s what was really fun for me.  Sure, we got to be goofy (and who doesn’t love a little goof every now and then?).  But beyond that, we got to immerse ourselves in the product and its market; we got to be the experts.

And for me, that’s the fun of business school.  Sure, I’m not an expert on much of anything now, but I look forward to being so someday, even if it’s merely ridiculous costumes.