Looking for unnecessary solutions

“Complacency is risky”, said the conference leader. “Standing still is the riskiest move you can make.”

Unless you’re prey to a predator who can’t see anything unless it moves.

While I understand and agree that if standing still means not looking around, it is indeed a mistake if conditions of threat and opportunity are changing. But maintaining constant vigilance does not always equate to constant change. Taking this concept into the process of new product development, I spoke with Garry Ridge, my boss, about how WD-40 has addressed the need for finding solutions, while its success has been in large part a result of nearly six decades of constancy.

“For many years we used small twist-off sample packs of our WD-40 multi-use product to build end user awareness of our product in new markets,” Garry explained. “It worked great, was cost-effective and allowed us to get our product into the hands of many, many users. Once they did use it, they almost always became customers, because the product simply works great.”

“Then one year an idea emerged to change the twist-off pack to a miniature version of the full product. It looked really cool, and we could imagine people getting a real kick out of it. But it was expensive, we could only provide samples to a much smaller audience and we had some difficulties with the tiny mechanisms working properly, not to mention the cost of tooling at the can supplier and filler. Ultimately, we returned to the idea of the twist-off pack.”

In our marketing-driven consumer economy, it is known that the human mind stops noticing things that are constant in their world. Psychologists talk about a “just noticeable difference” which is derived from many years of research around sensory input and nerve stimulation. In general, any given sense modality must experience a 15 percent change in the quantitative measure of the sense’s input, in order for a person to say they noticed a change. If you are measuring sensitivity to amplitude of a tone, for example, you must change the decibel level by about 15 percent to elicit a response from the test subject.

This is why advertisers are continually trumpeting “New! Improved!” in their messages and images. They are attempting to gain notice among the many stimulants that the consuming public is exposed to. Ironically, when all advertisers blare “New! Improved”, they collectively are reducing sensitivity of the public to that very message. But the marketing profession still searches for that which is new, that which is different and how to entice the eye, ear and pocketbook away from all other choices.

So I asked Garry about this. If WD-40 is so constantly recognizable in many of its markets (and it is), how does it garner attention? Why don’t people tune it out?

Garry replied, “I’d have to point to one of our six corporate values, which is ‘creating positive lasting memories.’ We believe that if we do that -- with our employees, shareholders, customers and trusted vendors -- we will succeed. In that sense, changing our identity and our message risks disrupting the great memories people have collected in context of using our products. Why would we want to erode something that’s taken us decades to create?”

I think a lot of companies go looking for new solutions when the ones they have are still solving the problem. Change in a brand’s properties is not a good idea when it disrupts the positive memory that took years to build in the minds of the buyers of the product. The average term of a brand manager on a particular consumer product is apparently 18-24 months, and when they first arrive in their new position, following the existing formula is not their highest goal. They are trying to add value, as they define it, which means typically searching for that better way.

It strikes me that marketing and advertising professionals are at risk of falling prey to their own techniques, e.g., "It's new and improved!" While they may know it is a technique in gaining attention of the fickle consuming public, it still is a desire they, as humans, need to satisfy as well. Applying sound principles which work, over the long term, is not as exciting to the creative mind. Perhaps the definition of brand management must be carefully crafted so as to employ the benefits of constancy in establishing strong memory in the customers’ minds, while not ignoring the possibility that other principles need to be identified. The trick is in testing those new principles, messages and marketing approaches in a manageable pond, before they are launched into the deep water of an existing, loyal customer base.

Sewitch is an entrepreneur and business psychologist. He serves as the vice president of global organization development for WD-40 Company. Sewitch can be reached at sewitch1@cox.net.