2006-04-11

Pure Genius

About a million years ago in some Marketing 101 class I had a professor who asked the class hypothetically, how could we increase sales if we owned a hair shampoo company? What creative ways could we come up with?

Being college kid knowitalls everybody spouted out all the cliche answers such as:

Trendy shaped bottle
Spend more on advertising
Product placement on TV shows
Celebrity endorsements
Optimizing price points v quantity
Cross promotions
etc.

That was probably me that barked out "etc."

Teacher says "how about having some instructions on the bottle that say: wash rinse REPEAT"

- Brilliant move - doubled shampoo sales and now it is the industry standard. - All shampoo bottles say that now. Repeat - duh! Twice as much product used.

I wonder what that marketing professor would say about Callaway and Phil Mickelson's high profile use of two drivers - Pure Genius. And what fantastic timing since he won two tournaments in a row using them. Phil made the call and came through!

I could almost see it now, drivers being sold in bundles of two: $500 for a single 10 degree driver, $725 for two 10 degree drivers. This could be the biggest shift in golf equipment ho'ing since Dave Pelz started saying people should carry 4 wedges. ( I own 4 wedges but only carry 3: a pitching wedge that came with my iron set, a 56 and a 60. I also have a 53 degree gap wedge that I never use. Come to think of it, my marketing professor would be proud of Cleveland and Dave Pelz for that too: Do they care if I have 4 wedges in my bag or just that I buy 4 wedges? )

How many weekend hackers do you think will show up with two drivers in the bag come summertime? I've got to admit it is tempting. I carried two drivers for a couple years there: a 10 degree Big Bertha and a 6 degree Great Big Bertha. That wasn't a shot shape issue, it was a hey this hole looks wide open I'm going to use the 6 degree and hit the sh*t out of it issue. I gave up on the two driver method though once I found an 8.5 degree that I could hit straight and long enough. ( Titleist 975D)

In all fairness to Pelz, I don't use his 3 distances per wedge method inside 100 yards - but it does sound like a good method, especially now that you can get your distances to the flag with a GPS deal. I'm still of the school where you just look at where you want to hit it and let your brain tell you how far to hit it - same with putting. I guess that's another reason why I can't break par :)

BTW, if you ever find yourself walking through a grocery store looking for the beer section and happen to walk through the shampoo isle like I did last month; Just a heads up - when a shampoo bottle has the words printed on it "for dry hair" don't say to yourself "yeah, dry hair sounds nice, i like my hair dry, i'll get the one that's for if you want dry hair..." No no no that's all wrong. "For dry hair" doesn't mean for dry hair, it means "make my hair oily." I know, I don't understand it either.. just stick to stuff that says "for normal hair" and you'll be set. I think that is the new way for them to double their sales - confusing you into buying the wrong stuff so you will throw some away :)

Pantene is the best hair shampoo out there by the way. If you're not using Pantene go buy some and you will never go back to whatever shampoo you have now. Pantene is the Pro V1 of the shampoo industry - hey wait, pro v1 ... that just might be their slogan too - No way! total fluke there while typing. I swear that wasn't a set up, I'm going to go look *runs downstairs*

Very close, turns out Pantene is called PRO V - how cool!!

I took a pic of a Pantene Pro V with a Titleist Pro V1 together on my front lawn:

Here is snap of the back. Course I've never actually read the back because 1. I'm not wearing my glasses in the shower and 2. Why would I want to read it?
It looks like Pantene says "Repeat if desired. Use daily." And up there at the top it says "you have normal hair" so that is reassuring. Glad my hair is normal - Thank you Pantene!

UPDATE: Retail Conspiracy? Golf Blogger pointed this out as well..