Learning Launch in the emerging battery toothbrush segment

Challenge

I am working as a regional marketing manager in a personal care company in APAC area. I am  responsible to the oral care category (Toothpaste, Toothbrush & Mouthwash products). For our  toothbrush business, we are specialized in manual toothbrush with distinct market leadership and used  to have a lot of innovation to build the category.

While in recent years, we found some changes in the toothbrush category across APAC markets. There  are quite a few new entry brands that focusing on battery toothbrush (pricing index 1000 vs manual  toothbrush). With such a high price products, surprisingly retailers and consumers are showing interest  on these and we see a trend switching from manual to battery (volume growth in battery toothbrush >  volume growth in manual toothbrush). As a result, the company designed to invest in developing our  own battery toothbrush portfolio, while it comes to my team for qualifying the new product innovation  and launch activation ideas.

We were facing some challenges on launching our first battery toothbrush such as,

1) As a brand with strong consumer perception on manual toothbrush, we worry our brand cannot

carry battery toothbrush which has a pricing index 1000 vs manual

2) As a relatively late comer, we need to build our own distinctiveness in order to compete with

brands that already entered the category

Selection

In the early stage, the team has already used Storytelling and Prototype to engage our potential  consumers. The design of our battery toothbrush was influenced by observation of the households’  usage frequency, moment, duration; as well as the buyers’ (usually the Mum/Wife) purchase decision  making process, shopping journey. After understanding the targets, we then develop a prototype and  test it out with competitive products, which enable further optimization on the design and product  usage experience.

With the final product is out, we believe we need a learning launch in a small but representative APAC  country before massive roll-out to multiple countries in the region.

Application

We selected Singapore as the learning launch country given its multi-cultural population, higher income  and sophisticated household, and the supportiveness from retailer. To make the learning launch even  more specific so we can grab more learnings and insights, we chose to launch our battery toothbrush in  one retailer customer only. The customer is a chained pharmacy with shopper profile very match with  our target consumers.

To start with, we engage the management team of the retailer customer and align the expectation /  objective of the learning launch. Then we form a task force with participation from retailer’s team in  formulating the launch program, supporting model, pricing, distribution and in-store advertising plan.  Most importantly is to set challenging but achievable KPI as action standard for further launch.

For our first few months of learning launch, we picked only a 10% of the retailer’s shops to launch our  battery toothbrush. Those shops are NOT necessary the highest turnover but are shops that with high  traffic. This allowed us to make our battery toothbrush visible to more shoppers and hence potentially  increase the conversation rate.

After some early success in the first few months, we then fine-tuned our launch materials such as  communication message, trial program, and placement on shelf; then roll-out to all stores of this  exclusive retailer. With the bigger distribution coverage, we had also activated some media support  (mainly digital) to further spread out awareness.

The final result was satisfied and the learning launch did provide us some good learning. We are  planning to launch our battery toothbrush in other APAC countries in next year.

Insight

A few learning in the whole process,

1) At the establishment of the innovation project, it is good to have a clear timeline and a clear

indication on when to use various design thinking tools.

2) It is also good to have senior management endorsement on the approach earlier, and keep the

management aware of key stages. Transparency and regular update are essential for  sustainability.

3) For the business I am in, it involves retailer support as well. It is a good reminder to engage

them and also other important stakeholders in your business operation. For example as battery  toothbrush involving electronics and is quite different experience versus manual toothbrush, we  shall have engaged our internal customer service team earlier as well because they also need to  learn about the new innovation and be prepared for consumers’ enquiries. Earlier the  competency is built across the organization, lesser hiccups or mistakes would happen.

Approach

The combination of Storytelling, Prototype and Learning Launch seems to be good for a consumer goods  company when launching a new idea / innovation. While for next time, when we are launching the  second product of battery toothbrush, we might able to skip or shorten the storytelling part given we  already got the learning in our first launch.

Moreover as stated on the “Insight” session, early engagement to senior management, stakeholders,  retailer partners, multi-function teams are something we would take it more upfront next time.

