FW: No.1 Condom Banana and Strawberry Flavor - need your advice please

[Dan Borapich (KH, PSI)]

Hi All,

 

Hope you are doing well.

 

I got a situation and would like to hear your thought on this

 

Background – We started a campaign to reposition Number One condom as a premium quality condom since end of Q1 last year. It was not successful as the implementation of the marketing mix was not good enough. We still use the old foil, the pack is with new look but without cello wrap. Small support to the Promotion and the activities were not launched at the same time to get the big impact. Pricing is also not right as consumer do not perceive any difference between 500R (OK condom price) and 1000R (Number One price) and 1000R is not perceived as premium quality. We also got Place issue. The chance to improve the brand is the launch of the new variants (strawberry and banana) in this Q2 pricing at 1500R with better promotional campaign and trade marketing implementation.

 

Issue – the stock came yesterday with very poor quality of packaging as you can see in attached file. Manufacturer also made mistake by putting less lub than our spec even it’s still within the WHO standard. We can see by our eyes that it got less lub than OK condom (We used to have this less lub issue with OK condom and we got a lot of complaints and rejections of the brand from the market in the past 2 years)

 

My thought – we should not distribute this variant stock and delay our launch till end of the year when we got new stock. We can launch it together with the new stock of classic with new foil and cello wrapped packs (the current old foils condom will be expired by Q1 next year and we will stop distributing it by Q3 this year). The negative about this option is we may not achieve our this year volume and question from donor about the delay. And yes we will have hard time rejecting the stock with manufacturer.

 

But if we introduce the variants with this poor quality Product, we might kill the brand.

 

Any thought on this?

 

Thanks,

Pich

 

 

 

[Rakdaow]

Dear Pich,

Thanks for sharing a very challenging market in CAmbodia. Some thoughts on this.

Positioning wise, I think you and the team made the right move to re-launch ONE with new variants (Strawberry/Banana) to shift the consumers' awareness and recognition as a more 'premium' brand and try to distinct ONE from OK. Did you confirm now that the new positioning of ONE (price and product attributes) match with what consumers' needs - - they see Strawberry/Banana ONE as more premium with surplus lube amount and the designed packaging meet their expectations?

 

What I didnt' see from your background section (but I believe you have already completed already before) is the research confirmed

1) gaps identified the existing consumers for premium market

2) What does the premium market look like? consumers'prefernces in terms of 'products, price (willingness to pay), attributes of the products they perceived as 'premium', what are the 'trade off' between their current brands to the new premium brands' - - volume forecast kind of.

 

Your thoughts: I do agree with you that you should not launch poor package with 'not match' quality (in terms of lube amount) untill you are ready with the full promotional activities and advertising. And not meeting donor's target - but I think we shoudl beleive in QUALITY WORK and explain to our donors rather than launch a not ready product and kill our ONE positioning instantly - - meeting consumers' expectations is very important to gain their trail experience and loyalty.

 

A thought on 'fixing' the surplus stock if we can't negotiate with manufacturer is to UNPACK them and give away sachets for trial. I hope youw ill be able to negotiate with the manufacturer, it's their reputation too and we have the right to ask for 'top quality' products from them as their client.

 

Hope this is helpful and good luck Pich! (must say I do enjoy this topic more than my regular chores as a CR :)

 

Best,

Rakdaow