Band
Content
Band aid comes under wound care market Band aid logo is its strength
Client
Campaign Expertise
360 Degree Brand Stewardship Media Relations Partnership Development
Contact
Rachel Ufer Vice President, External Relations and Business Development North America
How do you help an iconic brand stay relevant?
BAND-AID® has always been a favorite of moms and kids everywhere. However, as an iconic and widely copied brand, it is important for BAND-AID® to stay relevant and develop communications programs that are uniquely "own-able" by the company. BAND-AID® approached Ogilvy PR to develop a communications platform that would contemporize the brand without abandoning its core equity.
Ogilvy's objective for BAND-AID® was to assert brand leadership and establish relevance to today's generation of web-savvy moms and kids. We set out to create a new emotional space that BAND-AID® could own: "stick-with-it-ness," which applied to both the emotional and functional sides of the brand. Our goal was to deliver the brand promise through a media campaign designed to bring stick-with-it-ness to life. The central focus of the Stick With It! campaign was the creation of the first-ever Stick With It! Awards, celebrating everyday kids who have "stuck with it" in school, sports, art, and hobbies. We created a co-branded website with Nickelodeon — stickwithitawards.com — where kids could enter for the chance to win a vacation for four to Hollywood to experience the Nickelodeon Blast Zone™ at Universal Studios Hollywood™ and a tour of the Nickelodeon Animation Studios. To drive awareness of the Awards and encourage kids to enter, we identified 15-year old Nickelodeon star Emma Roberts (the new Nancy Drew) as the campaign spokesperson and sent her on an extensive media tour that included national media appearances, an interview with a nationally distributed wire, interviews with celebrity publications, and interviews with teen and youth writers at top-tier newspapers. A multi-media partnership with Nickelodeon, including a surround sound campaign advertised in Nickelodeon and Nick, Jr. magazines and online, further expanded the Awards' reach to moms and kids. Our Stick With It! initiative exceeded our estimates, bringing in over 65 million media impressions for BAND-AID®. The bulk of the coverage targeted kids and parents together — an approach which appeals to the target consumer (moms and dads). The campaign's young spokesperson, Emma Roberts, re-energized the brand and helped the campaign bring in 3,500 contest entries. Stick With It! successfully reinforced the BAND-AID® brand's core equity while encouraging kids and parents to interact with the brand in a new, modern, and relevant way.
COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE
While Johnson & Johnson’s Band-Aid brand has long been the leader in wound care, remaining so with a 27% value share in 2011 despite falling from 28% in 2010, this lead has slowly been eroded by the Beiersdorf brand Elastoplast, which has its strength in both gauze, tape and other
wound care and sticking plasters and adhesive bandages. Elastoplast, which specialises in fabric rather than plastic bandages, is more hardy and robust than Band-Aid, and it is this durability that it has pushed in branding. It encourages consumers to be active and make the most of their lives with taglines such as “defy your limits”, and a range branded Extreme. The aim is to reassure consumers that Elastoplast can help with any consequent injuries. It is this strategy that led to Elastoplast making gains from 25% in 2010 to practically be neck-and-neck with Band-Aid on 26% in 2011. Whilst Elastoplast builds on its association with supporting activities, under the tagline “supporting your passion”, Band-Aid is largely relying on its heritage as a family brand that Australians feel comfortable with.
When Curad took on Band-Aid
I love the story of how Curad, the smaller player in the bandage market took on Band-Aid, the market leader. The bandage maker has been smart in how it took on Band-Aid, I mean lets face it a plaster is a plaster. But when a kid has an ‗ouch‘ moment sometimes getting a plaster on them can be a challenge….also you want that plaster to be the ‗make everything better‘ moment.With J&J behind them you would think there would be no way that they could take them on and win. But when it came to children‘s bandages, that is exactly what they did. In 1990 Curad partnered with McDonalds, in what was a moment of marketing genius. With 85 percent of kids under the age of six visiting McDonald‘s about once per week, kids were more than happy to see their favourite McCharachters on the plaster that would make them feel better. (Also a 25cent off voucher drove traffic to McD‘s!) Curad continued to cater to the ever-growing children‘s market and in 1991, began to produce specially shaped bandages for fingers, elbows, knuckles, and knees. Then they really went after Band-Aid and in conjunction with several blockbuster movies and television programs, Curad had its bandage strips printed with such characters as Casper the Ghost, Jurassic Park dinosaurs, and Cartoon Network characters.
Then in 1997 they launched a Design Your Own Bandage contest, in conjunction with
Nickolodeon. The contest was so successful that it became an annual event.Not wanting to leave tweens and teens out, they launched Tattoo-U designs. In another clever move, in 1998, Curad teamed up with the American Youth Soccer Organization and became a sponsor of the AYSO, which in turn offered Curad bandages as the official team bandage. Of course kids dont actually buy the bandages so the marketing strategy was targeting the consumers who actually did the purchasing, married people between the ages of 35-54. Most of the mass marketing occurred where the kids usually shopped with their parents, not pharmacies, but supermarkets. Johnson & Johnson‘s Band-Aid, Curad‘s major competitor, didnt sit still of course. They fought back trying to go one better than Curad launching a range of plasters with Disney characters, endangered species (which was a tie-in with the World Wildlife Fund), and NASCAR racing designs. The Results
By the late 1980s, Curad had approximately 25 to 30 percent of the total market, while Johnson & Johnson had about 60 to 65 percent. In 1990, Curad‘s sales increased about 20 percent, and Band-Aid‘s sales dropped about 10 percent. By 1993, Curad held 36.1 percent of the entire children‘s bandage market, while Johnson & Johnson held 26.6 percent of the children‘s bandage market. By the end of the 1990s, though Johnson & Johnson still had greater overall bandage sales, Curad continued to lead the children‘s bandage market.
BAND-AID® Marketing.
Posted by admin in Advertising, Branding, Marketing, Media, pop culture, tags: BAND-AID, Marketing, marketingcentric
My kid loves BAND-AIDs. She believes that, any time she‘s wounded, a BAND-AID strip will make it better. I‘m not talking about bleeding, here – I mean, if she sprains her finger, the dog steps on her foot, or if she has a stiff neck – a BAND-AID will fix her right up. My apologies to the fine folks at Johnson & Johnson, but that ain‘t necessisarily so. Don‘t get me wrong…adhesive bandages serve a useful purpose in the healing process, but they are not the one-size-fits-all, universal cure that my daughter would have me believe. (If they were, I wouldn‘t mind our anual expenditures for BAND-AIDs, which seems to be a significant portion of the family debt, since she‘s taken to putting them on EVERYTHING…) But this is not a post about medicine, except as it relates to marketing. Too many people look at marketing as a kind of BAND-AID for their branding, their advertising, and their sales. And far too many take a BAND-AID approach to marketing itself. Here‘s the deal: marketing should be a carefully thought-out approach to communicating your products or services value proposition(s) to your prospects and customers. That‘s it. If we use a fishing analogy, the fish is the prospect, the bait is the advertising, the pole and reel represents the media, and the fisherman is you – the company, group or individual selling something. Think of ―marketing‖ as the fishing guide that tells you where to fish, what kind of bait to use, what gear you need, and teaches you how to reel ‗em in. The biggest problem with marketing is that it is so seldom understood by the people that need it the most. The second-biggest problem with marketing, is that so many clients think of marketing as an afterthought – a sort of ―cart-before-the-horse‖ thing. They will expend large amounts of time and money coming up with a great idea or concept for an ad or a campaign, then turn their attentions to ―marketing.‖ They‘ll try to concoct a marketing rationalle to do whatever it is they want to do – justifying their actions with a ―marketing plan.‖ When the campaign falls flat, they blame marketing. The way things are SUPPOSED to work is that you first sit down and identify your goals. (It‘s hard to know if you got there, if you don‘t first decide where you‘re going.) Next, you try and ascertain if these goals are realistic. (Many is the marketing plan that fails because reality and expectations were not even in the same zip code.) After you‘ve accomplished that, you turn your
attention to developing strategies and tactics to realize your goals. Only then should you start thinking about the uber-cool ad you wanna run, or the insanely great promotion you have in mind. If it doesn‘t help get you closer to the goalline, you need to let it go and try something else. For instance, let‘s say your goal is to increase sales by 20%. Taking the BAND-AID approach, you decide that what you need is a big newspaper ad campaign. Will it work? Depends. But regardless of it‘s odds of success or failure, it‘s a safe bet that you‘re gonna be less effective with the campaign than if you‘d started with a well thought-out marketing approach, instead of the traditional BAND-AID marketing. Instead, let‘s assume that you do a little research first. You look at your prospects demographics – let‘s say your product appeals to those between the ages of 18 and 25. Demographicallyspeaking, almost NONE of that age group reads the paper. Doesn‘t matter if you do – they don‘t. So a newspaper campaign will fall flat. What about the newspaper‘s online site? Maybe – you‘d have to look at their demographics. A better approach would be to survey some 18 to 25-yearolds and ask them ―what do you do with your day.‖ You might find that they have a phone superglued to their ear, spend 5 hours online, are addicted to SMS or IMs, and get most of their TV from YouTube. From this data, you‘d learn that TV spots are a waste (thank you Tivo), newspapers are deadly, but viral marketing through MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube might reach your target demographic where they live. Of course, this creates a whole ‗nuther set o‘ problems, namely, how to effectively use this kind of media to reach your demographic, without alienating them (inauthentic = certain death). On the other hand, if you‘re marketing Metamucil or Dentu-Grip, anything online is a waste, and newsprint is your savior – it all depends on your goal and how your prospects want to be reached. BAND-AID marketing says ―let‘s throw money at the problem until something works.‖ Marketing-centric marketing says ―let‘s think about the goals, analyze the market, then craft a solution that we think will work, and finally test it to see if we‘re right.‖ Taking a marketingcentric approach is not a magic bullet, and it won‘t guarantee results. But it works far better than doing something to stroke a corporate ego, and trying to ex post facto justify it with some marketing mumbo-jumbo.
Dickson Made Band-Aid Stick
For Earle Ensign Dickson, inventing the Band-Aid brand adhesive bandage was a labor of love. Yet even he could not have foreseen that Band-Aids would become one of the most successful consumer brands in marketing history. Earle Dickson (1892-1961) married his sweetheart, Josephine Frances Knight, on Dec. 6, 1917. At the time, he worked as a young cotton buyer for Johnson & Johnson JNJ. Josephine Dickson became a devoted wife and mother of two sons, and she enjoyed cooking for the family. But she suffered repeated accidents in which she cut or burned her fingers while preparing meals. Earle grew distraught at his wife's misfortunes in the kitchen. He was concerned that she couldn't bandage herself while he was away at work. When he was at home, he had a hard time affixing the big bandages to her small fingers. In 1920, Dickson came up with an idea that was quite simple yet highly creative. He developed the first self-adhesive bandage by affixing a small piece of gauze to the center of a strip of surgical tape. A covering of crinoline cloth kept the bandage sterile until it went on a wound. Josephine could simply cut off a section of tape, peel off the crinoline and wrap her finger herself. Voila, the Band-Aid was invented. Still, the Band-Aid was not a fast hit. Dickson had to be patient and persistent. Fortunately, he worked at a firm with ample resources. Johnson & Johnson was already a maker of large cotton and gauze bandages for hospitals and the military. Into It J&J co-founder Robert Wood Johnson quickly grasped the value of Dickson's new product. When Dickson pitched his idea, "the boys in the front office loved the concept," as Johnson recalled. Initial sales were poor. When the product came out in 1921, total revenue for the year was only $3,000 -- $34,000 in today's dollars. Officials at the company's advertising firm, Young & Rubicam, grew leery about Band-Aid's growth prospects, according to Lawrence Foster, Johnson's biographer and the former public relations chief at J&J. "The ad agency didn't think the Band-Aid was going to sell, so they took a rather dim view of the product," Foster told IBD. "Obviously, they were wrong."
The Band-Aid would emerge as the leader in adhesive bandages. It would grow so big, the brand name would become synonymous with the bandage category itself -- much like ChapStick, Kleenex and Scotch tape in their product categories. Perhaps Band-Aids were slow to catch on due to their original size. The first product was 2.5 inches wide and 18 inches long. Salesmen would carry scissors with them to doctor's offices and drugstores. Once there, they would snip off a length of the strip to demonstrate the product. In 1924, Johnson & Johnson built new machines to mass-produce Band-Aids as individual adhesive bandages, rather than long strips. This manufacturing breakthrough greatly improved sales. Johnson & Johnson also came up with some clever promotions. One salesman sent the product to every butcher in Cleveland for free. Then the company gave away free Band-Aids to the U.S. military and the Boy Scouts of America. Through the years, J&J honed its marketing strategy with a patriotic color scheme on the package. The company actively promoted hygiene education and Band-Aids through point-of-sale displays, short films, pamphlets and booklets. Soon, medicine cabinets nationwide were stocked with familiar tin boxes of Band-Aids. Dorothea Bartow, 87, of East Brunswick, N.J., was a secretary who worked under Dickson in the J&J hospital division from 1939 to 1943. Bartow saw Dickson in the office every workday for years. "He was a quiet, distinguished man, and was well respected within the company," she recalled in an e-mail. By 1929, the Band-Aid was a hot seller and Dickson was elected to the J&J board of directors. Three years later, the company promoted him to vice president -- making his parents extremely proud. Earle was born to Richard and Minnie Dickson in rural Grandview, Tenn., on Oct. 10, 1892. He lived there only as a baby, along with his brother Malcolm, before the family moved to Holyoke, Mass. Dickson attended Amherst College, then transferred to Yale University, graduating in 1913. The next year he earned another degree from Massachusetts' Lowell Textile School, which later became the Lowell Technological Institute. Dickson started his career at Bliss Fabian Co., a Boston textile firm.
In 1916 he joined J&J through its Chicopee (Mass.) Manufacturing Co. unit. He later moved to the parent firm's headquarters in New Brunswick, N.J. During World War I, Dickson served in the Army and did special duty for the War Department. He returned to J&J in 1919 and set up its first hospital division in 1925. He also worked with the Federal Bureau of Standards to craft national standards for surgical gauze and adhesive products. Over the decades, Band-Aids evolved into many formats as Johnson & Johnson improved the product line. Early upgrades included aeration holes, antiseptic pads, waterproof coatings, glassine wrappers and junior sizes. Special red tear strings debuted in 1940 to open the wrappers. Sheer vinyl Band-Aids appeared in 1958. More recently, Band-Aids have morphed into multiple types, shapes, colors and sizes. They include super-stick adhesives for tough jobs, flexible plastics that bend easily with the skin, antibiotic coatings, and gels to heal painful blisters. J&J released its first Liquid Bandages in 2002. Dickson retired in 1957 before dying at age 68 on Sept. 21, 1961, at Middlesex General Hospital in New Brunswick, N.J. He had served as a trustee at the hospital for more than 30 years. By then, his invention was truly a global phenomenon. In 2001, Johnson & Johnson reached a remarkable milestone by turning out the 100 billionth Band-Aid. Devotion And Invention In many ways, Dickson's lasting impact was due to his lifelong devotion to his wife, according to Susan Tang, U.S. product director for Band-Aid brands. That kind of familial love became a hallmark of the brand itself, much as when young parents find out how well a Band-Aid can comfort a child with a scraped knee. Tang says such an enduring emotional legacy should be traced back to Earle's deep affection for Josephine. "The Band-Aid has become a universal symbol of care and love, of making it all better, and that is what is so emotionally endearing about the product," she told IBD. "It's the whole act of putting on the bandage, just as Earle did for his wife."
Band-Aid Children's Transformers Adhesive Bandages-20ctAssorted Sizes - $2.75
Alexandre Herchcovich has joined forces with Johnson & Johnson for a limited collection of colourfully patterned Band-Aids. The look great, but alas, you won‘t find these at your nearby drugstore. - June 23rd, 2008
Designer Band-Aids benefit Design Ignites Change
September 30, 2010
New York-based designer Cynthia Rowley has teamed up with Johnson & Johnson to create limited edition ―Dress-Up Band-Aids‖ with a contribution from the project benefiting Design Ignites Change.
Worldstudio‘s Nina Mettler and Andréa Pellegrino, Johnson & Johnson Chief Design Officer Chris Hacker and Cooper-Hewitt Director Bill Moggridge were on hand to celebrate Ms. Rowley at a luncheon on September 11th at the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum. The stylish Band-Aids can be bought at www.cynthiarowley.com for $10 with a dollar of each sale going to Design Ignites Change. Competitive analysis
Elastoplast
Elastoplast is a trademark name of a brand of adhesive bandages (also called sticking plasters) and medical dressings made by Beiersdorf.[1] Beiersdorf bought UK and Commonwealth rights from the parent company, Smith & Nephew in 1992 for £46.5 million. It has become a genericized trademark for "sticking plaster" in some Commonwealth countries including the United Kingdom and Australia.[2] In some countries, the line is known as Hansaplast,[3] a brand name started by Beiersdorf in 1922.
Curad
Curad is a brand of first aid supplies produced by Medline Industries, which acquired the brand from Beiersdorf in April 2007.[1] The brand competes with Johnson & Johnson's Band-Aid brand in the adhesive bandage market. The brand also sells similar products such as bandages, surgical tape, and liquid bandage products.
Nexcare
Nexcare is 3M's personal health care brand. The brand competes with Johnson & Johnson's Band-Aid brand in the adhesive bandage and first aid market. The brand also sells similar products such as bandages, gauze, surgical tape, cold sore treatment and liquid bandage products.
Client
Campaign Expertise
360 Degree Brand Stewardship Media Relations Partnership Development
Contact
Rachel Ufer Vice President, External Relations and Business Development North America
How do you help an iconic brand stay relevant?
BAND-AID® has always been a favorite of moms and kids everywhere. However, as an iconic and widely copied brand, it is important for BAND-AID® to stay relevant and develop communications programs that are uniquely "own-able" by the company. BAND-AID® approached Ogilvy PR to develop a communications platform that would contemporize the brand without abandoning its core equity.
Ogilvy's objective for BAND-AID® was to assert brand leadership and establish relevance to today's generation of web-savvy moms and kids. We set out to create a new emotional space that BAND-AID® could own: "stick-with-it-ness," which applied to both the emotional and functional sides of the brand. Our goal was to deliver the brand promise through a media campaign designed to bring stick-with-it-ness to life. The central focus of the Stick With It! campaign was the creation of the first-ever Stick With It! Awards, celebrating everyday kids who have "stuck with it" in school, sports, art, and hobbies. We created a co-branded website with Nickelodeon — stickwithitawards.com — where kids could enter for the chance to win a vacation for four to Hollywood to experience the Nickelodeon Blast Zone™ at Universal Studios Hollywood™ and a tour of the Nickelodeon Animation Studios. To drive awareness of the Awards and encourage kids to enter, we identified 15-year old Nickelodeon star Emma Roberts (the new Nancy Drew) as the campaign spokesperson and sent her on an extensive media tour that included national media appearances, an interview with a nationally distributed wire, interviews with celebrity publications, and interviews with teen and youth writers at top-tier newspapers. A multi-media partnership with Nickelodeon, including a surround sound campaign advertised in Nickelodeon and Nick, Jr. magazines and online, further expanded the Awards' reach to moms and kids. Our Stick With It! initiative exceeded our estimates, bringing in over 65 million media impressions for BAND-AID®. The bulk of the coverage targeted kids and parents together — an approach which appeals to the target consumer (moms and dads). The campaign's young spokesperson, Emma Roberts, re-energized the brand and helped the campaign bring in 3,500 contest entries. Stick With It! successfully reinforced the BAND-AID® brand's core equity while encouraging kids and parents to interact with the brand in a new, modern, and relevant way.
COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE
While Johnson & Johnson’s Band-Aid brand has long been the leader in wound care, remaining so with a 27% value share in 2011 despite falling from 28% in 2010, this lead has slowly been eroded by the Beiersdorf brand Elastoplast, which has its strength in both gauze, tape and other
wound care and sticking plasters and adhesive bandages. Elastoplast, which specialises in fabric rather than plastic bandages, is more hardy and robust than Band-Aid, and it is this durability that it has pushed in branding. It encourages consumers to be active and make the most of their lives with taglines such as “defy your limits”, and a range branded Extreme. The aim is to reassure consumers that Elastoplast can help with any consequent injuries. It is this strategy that led to Elastoplast making gains from 25% in 2010 to practically be neck-and-neck with Band-Aid on 26% in 2011. Whilst Elastoplast builds on its association with supporting activities, under the tagline “supporting your passion”, Band-Aid is largely relying on its heritage as a family brand that Australians feel comfortable with.
When Curad took on Band-Aid
I love the story of how Curad, the smaller player in the bandage market took on Band-Aid, the market leader. The bandage maker has been smart in how it took on Band-Aid, I mean lets face it a plaster is a plaster. But when a kid has an ‗ouch‘ moment sometimes getting a plaster on them can be a challenge….also you want that plaster to be the ‗make everything better‘ moment.With J&J behind them you would think there would be no way that they could take them on and win. But when it came to children‘s bandages, that is exactly what they did. In 1990 Curad partnered with McDonalds, in what was a moment of marketing genius. With 85 percent of kids under the age of six visiting McDonald‘s about once per week, kids were more than happy to see their favourite McCharachters on the plaster that would make them feel better. (Also a 25cent off voucher drove traffic to McD‘s!) Curad continued to cater to the ever-growing children‘s market and in 1991, began to produce specially shaped bandages for fingers, elbows, knuckles, and knees. Then they really went after Band-Aid and in conjunction with several blockbuster movies and television programs, Curad had its bandage strips printed with such characters as Casper the Ghost, Jurassic Park dinosaurs, and Cartoon Network characters.
Then in 1997 they launched a Design Your Own Bandage contest, in conjunction with
Nickolodeon. The contest was so successful that it became an annual event.Not wanting to leave tweens and teens out, they launched Tattoo-U designs. In another clever move, in 1998, Curad teamed up with the American Youth Soccer Organization and became a sponsor of the AYSO, which in turn offered Curad bandages as the official team bandage. Of course kids dont actually buy the bandages so the marketing strategy was targeting the consumers who actually did the purchasing, married people between the ages of 35-54. Most of the mass marketing occurred where the kids usually shopped with their parents, not pharmacies, but supermarkets. Johnson & Johnson‘s Band-Aid, Curad‘s major competitor, didnt sit still of course. They fought back trying to go one better than Curad launching a range of plasters with Disney characters, endangered species (which was a tie-in with the World Wildlife Fund), and NASCAR racing designs. The Results
By the late 1980s, Curad had approximately 25 to 30 percent of the total market, while Johnson & Johnson had about 60 to 65 percent. In 1990, Curad‘s sales increased about 20 percent, and Band-Aid‘s sales dropped about 10 percent. By 1993, Curad held 36.1 percent of the entire children‘s bandage market, while Johnson & Johnson held 26.6 percent of the children‘s bandage market. By the end of the 1990s, though Johnson & Johnson still had greater overall bandage sales, Curad continued to lead the children‘s bandage market.
BAND-AID® Marketing.
Posted by admin in Advertising, Branding, Marketing, Media, pop culture, tags: BAND-AID, Marketing, marketingcentric
My kid loves BAND-AIDs. She believes that, any time she‘s wounded, a BAND-AID strip will make it better. I‘m not talking about bleeding, here – I mean, if she sprains her finger, the dog steps on her foot, or if she has a stiff neck – a BAND-AID will fix her right up. My apologies to the fine folks at Johnson & Johnson, but that ain‘t necessisarily so. Don‘t get me wrong…adhesive bandages serve a useful purpose in the healing process, but they are not the one-size-fits-all, universal cure that my daughter would have me believe. (If they were, I wouldn‘t mind our anual expenditures for BAND-AIDs, which seems to be a significant portion of the family debt, since she‘s taken to putting them on EVERYTHING…) But this is not a post about medicine, except as it relates to marketing. Too many people look at marketing as a kind of BAND-AID for their branding, their advertising, and their sales. And far too many take a BAND-AID approach to marketing itself. Here‘s the deal: marketing should be a carefully thought-out approach to communicating your products or services value proposition(s) to your prospects and customers. That‘s it. If we use a fishing analogy, the fish is the prospect, the bait is the advertising, the pole and reel represents the media, and the fisherman is you – the company, group or individual selling something. Think of ―marketing‖ as the fishing guide that tells you where to fish, what kind of bait to use, what gear you need, and teaches you how to reel ‗em in. The biggest problem with marketing is that it is so seldom understood by the people that need it the most. The second-biggest problem with marketing, is that so many clients think of marketing as an afterthought – a sort of ―cart-before-the-horse‖ thing. They will expend large amounts of time and money coming up with a great idea or concept for an ad or a campaign, then turn their attentions to ―marketing.‖ They‘ll try to concoct a marketing rationalle to do whatever it is they want to do – justifying their actions with a ―marketing plan.‖ When the campaign falls flat, they blame marketing. The way things are SUPPOSED to work is that you first sit down and identify your goals. (It‘s hard to know if you got there, if you don‘t first decide where you‘re going.) Next, you try and ascertain if these goals are realistic. (Many is the marketing plan that fails because reality and expectations were not even in the same zip code.) After you‘ve accomplished that, you turn your
attention to developing strategies and tactics to realize your goals. Only then should you start thinking about the uber-cool ad you wanna run, or the insanely great promotion you have in mind. If it doesn‘t help get you closer to the goalline, you need to let it go and try something else. For instance, let‘s say your goal is to increase sales by 20%. Taking the BAND-AID approach, you decide that what you need is a big newspaper ad campaign. Will it work? Depends. But regardless of it‘s odds of success or failure, it‘s a safe bet that you‘re gonna be less effective with the campaign than if you‘d started with a well thought-out marketing approach, instead of the traditional BAND-AID marketing. Instead, let‘s assume that you do a little research first. You look at your prospects demographics – let‘s say your product appeals to those between the ages of 18 and 25. Demographicallyspeaking, almost NONE of that age group reads the paper. Doesn‘t matter if you do – they don‘t. So a newspaper campaign will fall flat. What about the newspaper‘s online site? Maybe – you‘d have to look at their demographics. A better approach would be to survey some 18 to 25-yearolds and ask them ―what do you do with your day.‖ You might find that they have a phone superglued to their ear, spend 5 hours online, are addicted to SMS or IMs, and get most of their TV from YouTube. From this data, you‘d learn that TV spots are a waste (thank you Tivo), newspapers are deadly, but viral marketing through MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube might reach your target demographic where they live. Of course, this creates a whole ‗nuther set o‘ problems, namely, how to effectively use this kind of media to reach your demographic, without alienating them (inauthentic = certain death). On the other hand, if you‘re marketing Metamucil or Dentu-Grip, anything online is a waste, and newsprint is your savior – it all depends on your goal and how your prospects want to be reached. BAND-AID marketing says ―let‘s throw money at the problem until something works.‖ Marketing-centric marketing says ―let‘s think about the goals, analyze the market, then craft a solution that we think will work, and finally test it to see if we‘re right.‖ Taking a marketingcentric approach is not a magic bullet, and it won‘t guarantee results. But it works far better than doing something to stroke a corporate ego, and trying to ex post facto justify it with some marketing mumbo-jumbo.
Dickson Made Band-Aid Stick
For Earle Ensign Dickson, inventing the Band-Aid brand adhesive bandage was a labor of love. Yet even he could not have foreseen that Band-Aids would become one of the most successful consumer brands in marketing history. Earle Dickson (1892-1961) married his sweetheart, Josephine Frances Knight, on Dec. 6, 1917. At the time, he worked as a young cotton buyer for Johnson & Johnson JNJ. Josephine Dickson became a devoted wife and mother of two sons, and she enjoyed cooking for the family. But she suffered repeated accidents in which she cut or burned her fingers while preparing meals. Earle grew distraught at his wife's misfortunes in the kitchen. He was concerned that she couldn't bandage herself while he was away at work. When he was at home, he had a hard time affixing the big bandages to her small fingers. In 1920, Dickson came up with an idea that was quite simple yet highly creative. He developed the first self-adhesive bandage by affixing a small piece of gauze to the center of a strip of surgical tape. A covering of crinoline cloth kept the bandage sterile until it went on a wound. Josephine could simply cut off a section of tape, peel off the crinoline and wrap her finger herself. Voila, the Band-Aid was invented. Still, the Band-Aid was not a fast hit. Dickson had to be patient and persistent. Fortunately, he worked at a firm with ample resources. Johnson & Johnson was already a maker of large cotton and gauze bandages for hospitals and the military. Into It J&J co-founder Robert Wood Johnson quickly grasped the value of Dickson's new product. When Dickson pitched his idea, "the boys in the front office loved the concept," as Johnson recalled. Initial sales were poor. When the product came out in 1921, total revenue for the year was only $3,000 -- $34,000 in today's dollars. Officials at the company's advertising firm, Young & Rubicam, grew leery about Band-Aid's growth prospects, according to Lawrence Foster, Johnson's biographer and the former public relations chief at J&J. "The ad agency didn't think the Band-Aid was going to sell, so they took a rather dim view of the product," Foster told IBD. "Obviously, they were wrong."
The Band-Aid would emerge as the leader in adhesive bandages. It would grow so big, the brand name would become synonymous with the bandage category itself -- much like ChapStick, Kleenex and Scotch tape in their product categories. Perhaps Band-Aids were slow to catch on due to their original size. The first product was 2.5 inches wide and 18 inches long. Salesmen would carry scissors with them to doctor's offices and drugstores. Once there, they would snip off a length of the strip to demonstrate the product. In 1924, Johnson & Johnson built new machines to mass-produce Band-Aids as individual adhesive bandages, rather than long strips. This manufacturing breakthrough greatly improved sales. Johnson & Johnson also came up with some clever promotions. One salesman sent the product to every butcher in Cleveland for free. Then the company gave away free Band-Aids to the U.S. military and the Boy Scouts of America. Through the years, J&J honed its marketing strategy with a patriotic color scheme on the package. The company actively promoted hygiene education and Band-Aids through point-of-sale displays, short films, pamphlets and booklets. Soon, medicine cabinets nationwide were stocked with familiar tin boxes of Band-Aids. Dorothea Bartow, 87, of East Brunswick, N.J., was a secretary who worked under Dickson in the J&J hospital division from 1939 to 1943. Bartow saw Dickson in the office every workday for years. "He was a quiet, distinguished man, and was well respected within the company," she recalled in an e-mail. By 1929, the Band-Aid was a hot seller and Dickson was elected to the J&J board of directors. Three years later, the company promoted him to vice president -- making his parents extremely proud. Earle was born to Richard and Minnie Dickson in rural Grandview, Tenn., on Oct. 10, 1892. He lived there only as a baby, along with his brother Malcolm, before the family moved to Holyoke, Mass. Dickson attended Amherst College, then transferred to Yale University, graduating in 1913. The next year he earned another degree from Massachusetts' Lowell Textile School, which later became the Lowell Technological Institute. Dickson started his career at Bliss Fabian Co., a Boston textile firm.
In 1916 he joined J&J through its Chicopee (Mass.) Manufacturing Co. unit. He later moved to the parent firm's headquarters in New Brunswick, N.J. During World War I, Dickson served in the Army and did special duty for the War Department. He returned to J&J in 1919 and set up its first hospital division in 1925. He also worked with the Federal Bureau of Standards to craft national standards for surgical gauze and adhesive products. Over the decades, Band-Aids evolved into many formats as Johnson & Johnson improved the product line. Early upgrades included aeration holes, antiseptic pads, waterproof coatings, glassine wrappers and junior sizes. Special red tear strings debuted in 1940 to open the wrappers. Sheer vinyl Band-Aids appeared in 1958. More recently, Band-Aids have morphed into multiple types, shapes, colors and sizes. They include super-stick adhesives for tough jobs, flexible plastics that bend easily with the skin, antibiotic coatings, and gels to heal painful blisters. J&J released its first Liquid Bandages in 2002. Dickson retired in 1957 before dying at age 68 on Sept. 21, 1961, at Middlesex General Hospital in New Brunswick, N.J. He had served as a trustee at the hospital for more than 30 years. By then, his invention was truly a global phenomenon. In 2001, Johnson & Johnson reached a remarkable milestone by turning out the 100 billionth Band-Aid. Devotion And Invention In many ways, Dickson's lasting impact was due to his lifelong devotion to his wife, according to Susan Tang, U.S. product director for Band-Aid brands. That kind of familial love became a hallmark of the brand itself, much as when young parents find out how well a Band-Aid can comfort a child with a scraped knee. Tang says such an enduring emotional legacy should be traced back to Earle's deep affection for Josephine. "The Band-Aid has become a universal symbol of care and love, of making it all better, and that is what is so emotionally endearing about the product," she told IBD. "It's the whole act of putting on the bandage, just as Earle did for his wife."
Band-Aid Children's Transformers Adhesive Bandages-20ctAssorted Sizes - $2.75
Alexandre Herchcovich has joined forces with Johnson & Johnson for a limited collection of colourfully patterned Band-Aids. The look great, but alas, you won‘t find these at your nearby drugstore. - June 23rd, 2008
Designer Band-Aids benefit Design Ignites Change
September 30, 2010
New York-based designer Cynthia Rowley has teamed up with Johnson & Johnson to create limited edition ―Dress-Up Band-Aids‖ with a contribution from the project benefiting Design Ignites Change.
Worldstudio‘s Nina Mettler and Andréa Pellegrino, Johnson & Johnson Chief Design Officer Chris Hacker and Cooper-Hewitt Director Bill Moggridge were on hand to celebrate Ms. Rowley at a luncheon on September 11th at the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum. The stylish Band-Aids can be bought at www.cynthiarowley.com for $10 with a dollar of each sale going to Design Ignites Change. Competitive analysis
Elastoplast
Elastoplast is a trademark name of a brand of adhesive bandages (also called sticking plasters) and medical dressings made by Beiersdorf.[1] Beiersdorf bought UK and Commonwealth rights from the parent company, Smith & Nephew in 1992 for £46.5 million. It has become a genericized trademark for "sticking plaster" in some Commonwealth countries including the United Kingdom and Australia.[2] In some countries, the line is known as Hansaplast,[3] a brand name started by Beiersdorf in 1922.
Curad
Curad is a brand of first aid supplies produced by Medline Industries, which acquired the brand from Beiersdorf in April 2007.[1] The brand competes with Johnson & Johnson's Band-Aid brand in the adhesive bandage market. The brand also sells similar products such as bandages, surgical tape, and liquid bandage products.
Nexcare
Nexcare is 3M's personal health care brand. The brand competes with Johnson & Johnson's Band-Aid brand in the adhesive bandage and first aid market. The brand also sells similar products such as bandages, gauze, surgical tape, cold sore treatment and liquid bandage products.
