The lady beside me scoops sun-dried tomatoes into a plastic bag and then scrawls a code on a twist-tie so the cashier will know how much to charge her. This is the little corner of the store where we healthy people (and I like to think smarter people) get our groceries. Sometimes it’s cheaper, sometimes it’s more expensive, but it’s almost always simpler and less processed than the big national brands.
Detergent isn’t something you’d expect to find here. But push your shopping cart a few feet past the seven-dollar loaves of sprouted-grain bread and there’s an entire line of cleaning products with a sales proposition just for us.
By “us,” I mean the post-Martha Stewart generation of environmentally aware but slightly spoiled consumers. We don’t want to destroy the planet completely, but we still want to feel a little of the luxury consumer life that we remember from the 1990s--back when we were all rich and discovered the wonders of fresh pasta and decorative wicker balls.
Frankly, the pasta machine is looking a little dusty these days, but no worries. The Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day line of cleaning products aims to bring fragrance and style to just about any household cleaning chore.
The pitch: “Uncomplicated products for a clean and happy home”
The Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day line was created in 2001 by Monica Nassif, a former corporate consultant with some 18 years in the brand building business. Okay, this woman is no dummy. Launching a food product is one thing. Anyone can do it. Launching a line of cleaning products is a whole new game, requiring an army of machines, chemists and liability lawyers.
Just producing and distributing a line of cleaning products would be impressive. Producing something that actually competes with the big national brands takes more than a good idea and a little ambition. It takes tremendous marketing brains. The product has to be genuinely special. It has to deliver on its sales proposition.
The Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day proposition is a simpler, more environmentally friendly cleaning product and gentler, phosphate-free cleaning agents. The products are naturally scented with essential oils of lemon verbena, lavender, basil and geranium. The line offers a "unified fragrance" approach to cleaning, with laundry, surface cleaners and other items available in common or complementing scents.
To help communicate that proposition, Nassif called on Sharon Werner of Werner Design Werks. Werner created the signature look of the brand, the muted palette and the type-heavy, slightly retro labels.
The result is a confident, high-value look that distinguishes the line completely from the big brands. There are no color bursts, no swirls, no vibrant splashes of orange and blue that are the norm over in the detergent aisle. The design implies a history by using vintage type elements.
Who buys it?
My hunch on the target customer was right. According to a company spokersperson, the Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day customer:
- Is an educated female;
- Works full-time;
- Has a moderately high household income;
- Is a busy mom and her family is important to her, but she doesn’t want to be solely defined by this role, and;
- Won't sacrifice performance for attributes of green, natural or healthy. In other words, her environment is more important than the environment.
Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day cleaning products are available in grocery, hardware and mass-market stores such as Whole Foods, Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, ACE Hardware, The Container Store, and Fred Meyer, as well as on the brand’s website.
Komentari
Great example
This kind of products are not coming from great inspiration, although they look very inspired and somehow reminiscent of some 'good old days" when everything was, at least from today's perspective, easy and simple.
Clarity of sales proposition
The unified fragrance concept and the packaging remind me of L'Occitane. I actually use some of the Clean Day products. They work brilliantly. I can see how they've developed a loyal customer base.
At first, I didn't understand the main sales proposition though. I couldn't tell if it's supposed to just smell better or whether it's supposed to be more environmentally friendly, all natural or whatever. Can you? There's a lot of copy on the packages. Not all of it gives useful information. Half of the copy on the soap bar could be eliminated without sacrificing anything useful for the consumer or compromising the look of the brand. Focusing on the value proposition may help attract new customers who would otherwise be dissuaded by the higher price. Also updating something like this every few years would help the brand from getting locked into dated look, which can be a risk with these kinds of chatty, folksy treatments.
Here's a Mrs. Meyer's trade show exhibit, with some fleeting shots of the stand. The salesman explains what the products are all about:
Tricky
It is really good for the begining, but as we know people gets tired of same fragrance after some time and the proposition can be modified quickly, especially if they get really big. This happens and its normal but we'll see how they are going to manage the brand strategy then...