Week 7 - Cleopatra Case

This is Cleopatra from HBO’s Rome. This Cleopatra was also lazy and rested on her laurels.

 

The Cleopatra soap case underlines the importance of market research and proper planning.  The team at Colgate was blinded by the surprise success of Cleopatra soap in France and assumed it would also be a runaway success wherever people spoke French.  Here are my thoughts.

First, Colgate wanted to sell the product in Quebec.  The team was already convinced the product would do great in Quebec, because you know they speak French, but wanted the “proper” market research to confirm their beliefs.  So, naturally they went to Toronto to conduct their market research.  Geography lesson, Toronto is not in Quebec! It’s in Ontario!  And English is the dominant language in Toronto, so they shouldn’t even like Cleopatra soap, right?  But none the less, Torontonians did like the soap and validated Colgate’s belief to push ahead in Quebec.

This led Colgate to use the same advertisement they used in France.  The advertisement in France is very Egyptian and provocative.  The ad tested very well with the Toronto group (50% reacted positively), so the team assumed it was well suited for the Quebec market.  However, it was later discovered that only 37% of people in Quebec reacted favorably to the ad.  For a soap being pushed as premium niche soap, this was not a good start.

The failure of the ad to create positive customer awareness complicated the pull strategy Colgate was relying on.  The case said that Colgate was trying to “generate enthusiasm” and needed the “best ever media and consumer promotion schedule”, but it appears that the Cleopatra French ad proved to be a stumbling block out of the gate.  Because people did not react favorably to the advertisement sales suffered and consumer demand did not persuade retailers to free up shelf space through the pull strategy in an already saturated soap market.  Finally, because the product was not being properly pulled to retailers’ shelves, consumers who did want the product could not find it!  The number one response to “why haven’t you tried Cleopatra?” was “it’s not available where I shop”.  30% of people who wanted the product could not physically buy it.

The sad part of this was Colgate had a winner on its hands and it just botched the implementation.  Cleopatra was really well liked by those who bought it!  About 30% of customers who tried Cleopatra soap used it all or most of the time.  This was the highest conversion rate for any of the competing soaps.  The closest competitor was Dove at 21%.  I would recommend that Colgate retool their marketing approach for Cleopatra and adjust the advertising, or bite the bullet and invest in a push strategy.