Shouldn't the Goal Be To Grow the Category?

For me, the fall and spring are conference seasons. During these months, I attend a lot of conferences (about 30 a year). It is like my version of the Amazing Race: globe trotting across the world and making my husband grumpy that I am not home more.

My favorite conference is the CGT Innovation conference held in Miami. I had the great fortune to attend it last week, and I had an even a greater fortune to hear the story of Wayne Delker, Senior Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer, The Clorox Company.  

Wayne feels that consumer products companies need to put their shoulder to the wheel to drive innovation. He feels that if we spur delight that we will drive consumer spending and propel us out the recession. He is doing his part. His model: Create Desire, Help the Shopper Decide, and then Delight.     His result? Grow categories. 

How? Stick to fundamentals :

• Improve price/value on the core business with a focus on 60/40 product superiority (winning a blind test over 60% of the time).
• Extend innovation to include cost.
• Enroll others in building your brands.

He has a zeal to meet unspoken consumer needs. To understand the consumer, he has built an innovation center to allow developers direct access to people using the Clorox products. He also believes that it is not enough to extend the category. Consider these examples of how he grew the category. 

Take the cat litter category. He started with delight. To reduce odors in cat litter, he added carbon. They communicated it to the consumer with some great ads and asked consumers to take the sniff test in the store (using garlic). The litter category grew by 10.9%.  

Or charcoal. Charcoal briquettes were invited in 30,000 B.C. They redesigned the briquette, improved the process and changed the shape. Along the way they reduced manufacturing waste, which improved both costs and sustainability. They drove desire with an add of "it ignites by the time of the first beer. BBQ PDQ." The result? Category growth of 15.8% on an old product.

And, then came Green Works: a totally new category from partnerships with the Sierra Club. The product combines natural ingredients with a brand that the consumer knows. The goal was for the Green Works product to clean as well or better than the similar Clorox product. It was built with help from formulation partners and is manufactured by a third party. It breaks the mold of the unstated war between chemical companies and environmental groups. Sierra endorses and receives a portion of the profit. Again, a product that grew the category.

One of the drivers that propels these results at Clorox is open innovation. Today, 80% of development at Clorox done in partnership with someone. It includes suppliers, universities, the government, and even with competitors. The most public joint innovation is the Clorox, Glad, and P&G partnership that combines some cool technology developed for femcare into some heavy duty garbage bags. 

Yes, we agree, innovation can propel categories. If only there were more stories like Wayne's.

For more on innovation in consumer products, check out our articles at AMR Research.

Comments

[Steven]

"Charcoal briquettes were invited in 30,000 B.C."

One presumes that they were invited to a barbecue, but nothing was certain in 30,000 B.C. -- or is now, for that matter, e.g. neither spelling nor sentence meaning.