Alex Woodruff Biz Buzz

Better than before How do you update a brand without making it look like what you had before wasn’t perhaps as good as you were making it out to be? For years people mocked the iconic Persil for claiming it washes whiter. What, like it didn’t wash white before? And what is ‘whiter’ anyway? The [...]

MBAs – on day 2 of Marketing Management be prepared for a question about this brand… Germany’s No1 shampoo brand used to have a complete dog’s breakfast of a portfolio. Too many variants, too many individual lines. I know because I got the list from their old website, before they spent nearly 18 months relaunching [...]

I notice that Henkel, despite being so big (and surely employing thousands of native speakers of English) has not yet worked out how to formulate wording in a “culturally appropriate manner”. Source: website screenshot. Click to enlarge. How about “Thank you for visiting our site. For more detailed information specifically tailored to United States visitors, [...]

Some companies deliberately sell the same product for a much lower price, even though there is a real danger customers will find out. Why? * To recruit customers to the brand (Boss selling ‘seconds’ in factory outlets can attract people who may trade up next time to higher price products) * To clear out stocks [...]

A simple guideline for designing posters – ask yourself, “How long will people stand in front of the poster and take everything in?”. The answer will normally be, around a second. I was once told that a poster should be a simple headline – better still your slogan – with a picture underneath of the [...]

A typical approach taken by Procter and Gamble (P&G) to capture people’s interest is the classic problem-solution trick. Here you show what the world is like or would be like without the product, then show the solution – ie the product the company is advertising. It’s usual head on with functional benefits. Henkel in Germany [...]