Go Green..!! P&G

Mother Earth! That is how we refer to this planet on which we live. Many poets have written innumerable poems praising her power. But over the period of time, we have forgotten to take care of our own mother earth who gives us food and shelter and as a result we have also witnessed her wrath! Even after all this we are attacking our own home incessantly.
"Some day the earth will weep, she will beg for her life, she will cry with tears of blood. You will make a choice, if you will help her or let her die, and when she dies, you will die too."- says John Hollow Horn, Oglala Lakota, 1932.
It is high time that we all get aware of the dire consequences. Many of our neighboring countries have already started taking effective steps towards conservation of our environment. People in most countries outside India have adopted methods and use products in their day to day life that are very eco-friendly.

In response to this and to cater to the need of the hour (this is my favorite line these days, need of the hour!), many FMCG manufacturing companies have come up with ideas to contribute their bit. To name a few companies that I know working towards this are P&G and Clorox. Luckily, even I got an opportunity to work on some of their concepts before they launched the products in the market, and the surprising fact that even I was somewhere a part of their great step towards conservation got me excited.

Basically their idea is to offer all the benefits of the product and additionally also offer the benefit of conserving the environment. So there is no trade off between the eco friendly benefits and the overall efficacy of the product. Because there are about 50-75% of the consumers out there in the US and UK who are for this kind of initiatives and intend to purchase them when there is no compromise involved, manufacturing companies leverage this aspect to pump up the consumer purchase interest. So this not alone boost the company’s profits, but also helps the company to build good will among people, reduces manufacturing costs and most importantly protects our planet.

The results are quite evident! The P&G sustainability head, VP, Mr. Len Sauers comments when asked about their achievement in this regards as "Over the past five years, we have reduced by 30% per unit of production our CO2 emissions, energy/water consumption and disposed solid waste. We have set a goal of reducing an additional 10% over the next five years, leading to total reductions over the decade of at least 40%. We are well on our way to achieving this goal." This is truly remarkable and laudable!

So, how did he do this? Incorporating a few manufacturing and form/formulation changes he was able to achieve a BIG difference. First off, the liquid laundry detergent was made more concentrated than it was, so that people could use just half a liter instead of 2 liters of the detergent. This reduced the raw materials, operation costs and the container size. More containers could be transported because of the less space occupied overall and thus reduced the transportation charges. This automatically improved your product, reduced costs and increase profits. Does that sound simple and logical?? We care for the nature and in turn we get all the benefits! Nature has always been very generous to the mankind!

Getting back to the point, although the whole thing sounds simple, there is a hell lot of technology and science involved and implemented to do this. Understanding the processes in our everyday world is the first step towards it. Like for example, let us consider the two products I would be discussing now. One, Tide from P&G and the other line of cleaners called Green Works. Although I did get a chance to work on Green Works and some other similarly positioned initiative from P&G, I dint work on the Tide brand specifically.

However, I would like to bring about some points that I noticed when I worked on these initiatives. The P&G initiatives talked about working efficiently at the low temperatures like 15 degrees (In the countries like US and UK the temperatures are generally low and hence they used hot/warm water to wash clothes, consuming more power and energy to wash the laundry) and a concentrated formula which gave a impeccable wash with lesser quantity of the detergents. This saved power and energy ensuring compactness too. Moving the entire U.S. market to concentrated liquid laundry detergents will eliminate 140 million pounds of materials from being used and transported. This is a lot!

Talking of the Tide which is already doing all these things without the efficacy trade off, Len wants to say that "if everyone in the U.S. switched from hot/warm water to cold water for machine laundering, we would eliminate up to 34 million tons of carbon dioxide from being released. This is nearly 8% of the U.S.'s Kyoto target. A product like this shows the great value of bringing sustainability to the vast majority of consumers." So they not just ensure the manufacturing and usage benefits but also research on the process that takes place when washing the laundry. They have an estimate of the CO2 released in the environment when the detergent is mixed in water. Excellent!!

Green Works also has similar claims, where it says that the line gives uncompromising results without releasing harmful fumes in the environment. As a result it attracts maximum consumer interest.
So many products have gone green and are showing best results. As we now know that even the smallest thing that make a big difference, even we need to contribute our bit. Many companies are also employing many initiatives towards conserving environment.
So let us all do our bit and collectively bring about some change!

Pirates of the American....!!

Ignorance is bliss! and Ehrlich proves it right. The founder and owner of the snack company Robert's American Gourment http://www.robscape.com/, is all blissful because he is ignorant of the stereotyped and overused strategies that every other company uses to earn profits. As a result he owns a $50 mn company of just about 15 employees!! He believes in doing things differently, creatively, and in a cool, funky manner, BUT never goes off tangent with the consumer needs. He always has his one ear to the consumer needs and all of his other senses working towards meeting those needs.
The article which I read about this one guy who does things SO creatively had my eye-brows up all the time I was reading it. One amazing guy(to put in his own cool terms!), a visionary and an entrueprenuer who is high on creativity and energy all the time.
Ehrlich not alone did things differently by coming up with this "pirate's booty" concept for a corn snack but also kept it very relevant to the consumer's need of the hour. By identifying this niche in the healthy-snack market in the US, he immediately came up with an idea that met the consumer needs by providing them not alone with the snack that was extremely tasty, but also that has all the healthy ingredients in it.
With 15 people in his company who are creative, talented and equally committed as he is, he ensures that he uses only "original" ideas to market his products. He has about 132 SKUs. Thats a lot! His marketing strategies involve using all catchy names, images and captions that attract consumers of all ages and groups. Some of the names he has got on his products are... "Pirate's Booty" (A pirate's image with a parrot, I must say this guy looks all happy and smart), "Small Puffs", "Chaos", "Dude's Chips" (I like this one!), "Antique Potato Chips (Party like it's 1985!)". These are only a few of them to name. Just imagine the kind of names that all his 132 snack products may have! I really am curious to buy all the 132 snacks, just to read their names! ;) I think while the snack is " food for good health" the captions are very well "food for thought".
Ehrlich personally feels that most of the snacks that are already available in the market are not having the qualities that his products have and sometimes even have totally unwanted information (like, one's laundry list behing Dorito's packet), that may put some consumers off. I think the laundry info on a snack pack is weird because I definitely would not want to think of my laundry when am munching on something. All I would want to do is enjoy the snack!
Adding some more points to the catchy names thing, I want to bring out a point here that with these names like "Dude's Chip" and "Antique Potato Chips (Party like it's 1985)" he is reaching out to varied groups of consumers of different age groups. He also uses many mascots and not just one (even here he breaks the rule of conventional marketing of using just one mascot to create and promote a brand image) to reach out to people. These mascots are very interesting, because some are fictional, some are real and some are even intellectual! This man truly knows his business and his people really well! A pirate, a beach bun, Vanna white lady, Albert Einstien are some of his mascots. He has chosen them so wisely that all kinds of people and of different age groups can identify themselves with the mascots. The fact that images make more impact and have greater and effective recallability is very well used by Ehrlich to reach out to his consumers. Even for an ordinary product like snack he takes so much care that people start identifying themselves with the product. These images are very artistic(created by his cartoonist friend) lively that gives a whole lot of energetic, cool, whacky and sophisticated look and feel for the product. But at the same time he offers consumers quality food, differently!
After reading all these "cool" things about Ehrlich and his snack company, I felt like visting his website http://www.robscape.com/. A real funky and entertaining site...truly!
The first thing I noticed about it is that it is very colorful site with cartoon images all over! It is very user freindly too and has links that will connect you immediately to things which you would mostly look for. Most importantly "Pirate in red"...I have apparently started liking his appearance a lot! :) They even have a link where in it suggests that they support a social cause too. Very nice!
The most I liked about this site is that it takes new recipes from the viewers and I dint fail to give my idea. They promised they will be back to me if they liked my idea. So let us wait and watch :)
However, I would also suggest them a few things that will help improve the overall appeal. I felt that the site has somewhat unclear images and at times while browsing some content was blocked by overlapping images (which I think they need to fix immediately!).
And while I was browsing through all those cartoon characters completely mesmerized, my imagination was at its heights and so even I just came up with some ideas there. I would suggest that they could come up with nice comic series in which they can show those characters like Einstein or the Pirate himself eating the snacks and introducing any new snack by talking about it or the ingredients and their benefits through dialogues in the series could help attract more viewers to the site and as a result can boost their purchase.
They also can come up with some flash games with those characters and have some online contests/or even offline and then can give away their snack packs to the winners. This will attract more gamers (considering we have a lot of them these days, its a new trend!). They can also offer the person who either is a big fan of Robert's(like me, :) now) or buyer to make him one of their mascots for say a few days or something, like "mascot of the month" offer/contest. They can also come up with the toy concept (I have a feeling that Ehrlich may not like this idea, because he believes in originality and this is in line with Mc Donald's promotional activity). Oh my god!! I am bubbling with ideas!! I think I should visit his site more often :P.
But for sure, I am definitely all inspired to believe in my gut feeling (like Ehrlich does) and go ahead and bring my idea to life! (Yeah, even I have one, definitely!).
Innovation and Creativity is surely in!!!
And guess what, while I was busy drafting this blog, I already recieved their reply on the recipe I sent them over. They will forward my idea! wow! That is really encouraging! :)