Secret Clinical Strength

Is your category getting disrupted by a new entrant? Are you losing relevancy & share? We can relate.

The problem: Secret, the #1 U.S. Antiperspirant Deodorant Brand, had enjoyed market share leadership for over 50 years, having genderized the category by launching the first female-specific deodorant in 1956. In the late 1990’s, it created the first premium tier ($4 MSRP vs. $2.50 average category MSRP) lineup, where it enjoyed market share dominance and ownership. In 2006, Dove, a billion dollar megabrand from Unilever, launched into the U.S. Deodorants category for the first time ever, directly into the premium tier, with unique and differentiated positioning in the emerging “skin benefits” consumer growth space. As a result, the category was disrupted, and Secret lost relevancy & share, with some weeks scanning as Dove #1 and Secret #2 (% $ Share).

To address these challenges, the business team asked, how might we determine the drivers of business and consumer declines on Secret, to restore share and user growth, in a way that could be superior and uniquely ownable by Secret?

The solution: Secret Clinical Strength. To build this product innovation, we took the team on a deep human insights journey, to understand unmet category needs. As part of learning plan, our market research (in P&G language: “CMK”) leadership encouraged us to learn from not just current or potential consumers, but also from “Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs)”, as we had seen these influencers play an outsized role on shaping consumer behavior and demand in leading-edge Beauty countries like China Skin Care and Brazil Hair Care. So thinking beyond category consumer immersions, we also learned from dermatologists, who could share new and emerging themes they learned from their patients. Dermatologists were noticing an emerging theme around more consumers needing treatment for “hyper-hidrosis.” More commonly known as “excessive sweating”, this condition was accelerating due to the ongoing obesity epidemic in the U.S., and people were going to their dermatologist to get prescription-grade deodorants to treat this condition. While these products did a good job of treating excessive sweat, they were very harsh on skin, forming a unique human insight with a lot of tension. At P&G, we are trained to know that the best human insights have an underlying tension, so we knew we were on to something big. As we worked this insight back with the R&D and Brand teams, we found a product form in our lineup (Soft Solid) which had the best efficacy on the market, but hadn’t had innovation or a refresh in 10 years. And after exploratory product testing, we found that our Soft Solid products performed similarly to prescription grade deodorants, without the side effects of skin harshness.

So, rather than combatting Dove with a me-too, Skin-focused launch (me-toos rarely work), we instead decided to create a new S-Curve in the category via Secret Clinical Strength, which created the super-premium price tier ($7.99 MSRP), which was 2X higher than premium price tier ($3.99 MSRP), and 3.2X higher than category average prices ($2.49 MSRP)! Were we crazy? No, because we knew this product would perform well in market among a niche consumer segment, and we had spent 3 years qualifying the launch and validating that the consumer demand would be there. For the launch plan, we obtained a “Doctor Endorsed Claim”, used the first-ever boxed packaging in the category (to connote premium), and brought the benefit & brand promise into our communication strategy. Our launch copy (Bridesmaid/Wedding Day) brought to life the product benefits in a “torture test” situation.

The value: We did $80 Million Year 1 sales, selling out stores the first weekend of availability, becoming the largest Global Beauty Care NPV initiative at P&G, ahead of brands like Pantene and Olay (that were 10 times larger than Secret). We grew our relevancy and restored our leadership share position from Dove. But most importantly, we touched & improved consumer lives, by solving a real consumer problem, with a solution that saved them money (vs. prescription-grade) and reduced common side effects. What was most fascinating is how a brand often underestimates the impact you can have with consumers when you solve a real problem, whether its acute, chronic, or occasional. Throughout our qualification journey, our forecasting and C&U testing had shown that this launch would be a low volume, high profit launch, generating most of its demand from the 4% of consumers who claim they are a heavy sweater. But guess what happened? When we doubled down on our marketing investment, and created the best scoring copy in Secret’s history, we showed a very real torture test situation to consumers, her wedding day. We drove the key drivers of advertising effectiveness: attention, emotion, and memory. And by doing that, we not only drove trial among heavy sweaters, we attracted an outsized number of perceived heavy sweaters, those who could relate to that specific moment in their own life, or to other life moments where they were sweating too much and needed a quick solution.

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