Marketing is a battle of perceptions, not products. - Al Ries

the professionals who are opposed to advertising say it downgrades their profession. And it does. To advertise effectively today, you have to get off your pedestal and put your ear to the ground. You have to get on the same wavelength as the prospect. In advertising, dignity as well as pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

Test marketing has some benefits, but we believe the negatives far outweigh the benefits. Some of the negatives include: WASTED TIME. You can't afford to waste the time that test marketing takes, especially since the essence of branding is getting into the mind first. TIPPING OFF THE COMPETITION. Test marketing will alert competitors and perhaps stimulate one or more of them to introduce similar products. UNPROJECTABLE RESULTS. Test marketing for Enamelon toothpaste projected $50 million in annual sales nationally. Actual sales: $10 million. One of the problems with test marketing is overstimulation of demand. To get enough tangible results to measure, you usually have to run a local marketing program that you can't afford to run nationwide.

The fickle-fingers affair Another missed opportunity is known in hand lotion circles as “the fickle-fingers affair.” The story starts with Jergens, the No. 1 brand with the dominant share of market. First, the company introduced Jergens Extra Dry, a creamlike product in an era of liquidlike lotions. Jergens Extra Dry was really a significant innovation smothered by the similarity of names. The prospect didn’t recognize the difference. But the competition did. Chesebrough-Pond’s introduced Intensive Care. Now for the first time, the new creamlike lotion had a name which positioned the product clearly in the consumer’s mind. And the product took off. Of course, when Jergens realized what was happening, they countered with a brand called Direct Aid. But it was the old story of too little and too late because the marketing victory went to Intensive Care. Today Intensive Care is the No. 1 brand. It outsells Jergens, Jergens Extra Dry, and Direct Aid combined. But isn’t the brand really called “Vaseline Intensive Care,” a line-extended name? True, but customers call the product Intensive Care, not Vaseline. In the mind of the prospect Vaseline is petroleum jelly; Intensive Care is a hand lotion.