Marketing expert Ben Rowe was ahead of his time on the Gillette Fusion launch, as can be seen here.
The jury’s in. For the first time in their illustrious history, Gillettes latest innovation hasn’t become their best seller. Gillette Fusion 5 blade razor launch has failed for two reasons. I speak with authority as a former employee at Gillette.
Reason 1: We don’t have a shaving problem
Reason 2: Innovation and research are not consumer benefits
Reason 1 details:
The Gillette Mach 3 and its various spin offs have made shaving about as good as it can get given we are running a sharp blade across our faces. We no longer have a shaving problem. It’s smooth, safe and comfortable. They’re trying to fix something that doesn’t need fixed. In this situation very few people will trade up, before we even consider the price premium they’re asking.
Reason 2 details:
8 years of shaving innovation and research doesn’t translate into an actual consumer benefit. It’s a diary, not a benefit. They’ve even placed stickers on other Gillette shaving products trying to convince consumers to switch. We won’t.
In the early days the Gillette strategy of obseleting themselves was a good one, but no strategy works forever, and there is always a point of diminishing returns. Seems Gillette has reached theirs.
Start up lesson: If your innovation doesn’t solve a problem or significantly improve the consumer experience, you haven’t got one.
Thanks for the mention Steve. Not only are Gillette not solving a problem, their only objective here is to trade consumers up = rip consumers off. That’s never a wise strategy.
It’s a bit too strong statement to say that there is no shaving problem. There was no browser problem just a few years ago when IE completely dominated the market – no one needed FireFox. Gillette has to innovate or it will lose the market to cheaper products with comparable quality. The day you stop innovating – you are dead.
I agree with Dmitry (somewhat)… it is possible to innovate first and problem-solve second… but it’s a much harder route to follow. Also loads of folks hated using IE (I still do)… so there were problems to fix (multiple browser pop-ups etc).
Good post Stevo…
“their only objective here is to trade consumers up = rip consumers off. That’s never a wise strategy”
You could argue that that’s exactly the model that a lot of the computer software and hardware industry is built on… yet we all keep upgrading.
But John, it’s about the trade off between increased benefits and costs. It would seem that here Gillette have got the maths wrong…