Regulators’ Credibility and Marketing Gap

Key points:

 

1. Seven infant strangulation deaths are the latest reminder of government agencies’ failure to keep on top of product safety issues.

 

2. They are hamstrung by tiny budgets and producer-friendly regulations, but they could communicate what they know more effectively.

Seven babies and toddlers are dead.

 

They are the victims of strangulation from cords from video baby monitors sold by Summer Infant. The Rhode Island company sold the monitors nationwide since 2004, and last week issued a voluntary recall of 1.7 million products from store shelves.

 

The recall made national news, but you’d be forgiven for missing it with the round-the-clock coverage from Egypt, or drama at the Minnesota state capitol. Perhaps you culled it out from the dozens of similarly opaque recall notices at your local Babies-R-Us. Or Walmart, or Target. If you were extraordinarily savvy, you subscribed to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) RSS feed.

 

Most likely, you didn’t hear about it. Nor do you hear about the weekly barrage of recalls and warnings from the CPSC, the FDA, and about a dozen other government agencies.

 

To get this out of the way: I believe the power of these agencies (and the requisite funding) to demand recalls of unsafe consumer products is unconscionable. Notice the juxtaposition between my first two statements in this article: On one hand, babies have been killed. On the other, a voluntary recall after over six years on the market. That the CPSC needs to wait for a company (in all but the most egregious of cases) to decide to recall is an unworkable situation.

 

That said, I can’t see an easy or clear fix. It would take an act of Congress, and I’m suspicious whether either chamber would take up potentially “anti-business” regulation at this point.

 

What I can get my head around is a better way to communicate.

 

What you need to realize first, especially in regard to consumer electronics, is how short a shelf life most products have. Let’s take a cell phone for an example: Unless there’s an apple on the back or you’re the owner of a popular Razr phone, it's likely the device you hold in your hand is the only production run they’ll do on that particular model. In other words, the company will make, say, 250,000 of a particular model and ship them worldwide. And unless the phone blows away sales projections, they’re on to the next thing. Our taste in consumer electronics is fickle—we won’t buy the same thing twice. Product life cycles are measured in weeks and months, not years.

 

As consumer electronics go, so does the rest of the market. If you’re lucky enough to find the same toy on the shelf six months after you see the first, it’s likely that toy has undergone at least one hardware or software revision.

 

From a safety regulator’s perspective, that makes the task of ensuring product safety daunting. By the time they get to a new product, it’s probably obsolete. The warning they might issue applies to a product that no longer exists. That’s one of the reasons the manufacturer doesn’t want them to do it. They’re always behind.

 

If it’s tough for a professional, it’s nearly impossible for the average consumer—much less the average parent.

 

Even when my wife and I were active consumers of infant products, the sheer number of notices and recalls was daunting. With as many as several per week, there was no way to keep up.

 

Add to that the short window of time parents have while their children move through development stages. What might have been critically important four weeks ago (i.e., supporting the head) is completely superseded by some new milestone—and with it, a new cadre of products.

 

Ugh.

 

It boils down to this: Recall information must be centralized, timely, and relevant.

 

First, centralized: Information from a dozen government agencies cannot mean checking a dozen Web sites. It’s too much—you’ll miss something. Second, timely: Information must move into the public’s hands faster. If Consumer Reports can figure this out on a shoestring budget, so can the CPSC and the FDA. Finally, and most importantly, relevance: I need to hear about only the products that matter to me—the one I purchased. Retailers, hear me when I say this: You collect and use tremendous analytics on our buying patterns. You know how to mine the data to get us to buy the next thing. That power must be used to let us know when something we bought—a toy, a phone, or a pound of hamburger—could kill us. We don't need to know the rest.

 

I am sick of the excuses. I am sick of the delays. It is time to get creative. It is time for public-private partnerships. But most of all, it is time to act—right now.

Related links:

FDA: MedWatch Safety Alerts for Human Medical Products
FDA: Recalls, Market Withdrawals, and Safety Alerts
CPSC RSS Feeds
CNN: 1.7 Million Baby Monitors Recalled After Two Infants Strangled by Cords

How to Make Cigarettes Sexy Again

Key points:

 

1. Proposed FDA guidelines for cigarette packaging and advertising ramp up the shock value by using graphic images of the effects of smoking.

 

2. It’s easy to see where they got the idea: Past anti-smoking campaigns have been effective by using a similar approach.

 

3. But today, the image of cigarettes has shifted. They are a “dangerous” brand, and adding shock value will actually increase their appeal.

 

If you weren’t listening when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) told you smoking was harmful, now they intend to show you.

 

Earlier this month, the FDA issued a new proposed rule, ratcheting up the rhetorical shock value for cigarette packaging and advertising. Instead of the now-pedestrian written warnings currently gracing your Marlboro pack, by summer of next year, you also could be staring at a corpse.

 

The proposal (open to public comment through January 11) includes graphic images of the effects of smoking—death, cancer, birth defects, etc.—alongside the written warning on each package, carton, and print advertisement.

 

I’ll show you one here. You can visit the FDA site for the rest.

 

 

Before we move on, let’s agree to avoid the “government has no right to regulate a legal product” argument. The Supreme Court says yes, so that discussion is over. As the authorized regulator of tobacco products as a drug, the FDA is simply attempting to complete its mission: Reduce the number of people smoking.

 

I’d prefer to discuss the efficacy of the approach—I don't think it will work. Why? Because apparently, no one at the FDA was ever 14 years old.

 

Back before cigarette ads were banned from television, cigarettes on the whole had a glamorous appeal. Cigarettes were a part of every movie and television show. Lucy and Ricky hawked cigarettes. So did the Flintstones. If you wanted sex appeal, you smoked. (It was no marketing accident that the default activity following “adult encounters” was having a smoke.)

 

In marketing language, smoking had a “lover” brand archetype. Certain brands played around the edges (Marlboro, most successfully), but they appealed to the desire for sophistication, belonging, and attractiveness.

 

Take a look at a few classic television spots. In the second, you can hear Fred Flintstone utter the classic Winston tagline: “Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should.”

 

 

 

 

 

To counter that “lover” image, in the 1980s and 1990s anti-smoking campaigns went for the shock value. They (successfully) tore down the glamour image of the cigarette, transforming it into an easy path to premature death. The “Truth” campaign ads are a great example.

 

 

In fact, campaigns like these were so successful that they changed the core of the brand archetype for cigarettes as a whole. They are now an outlaw brand—dangerous and rebellious.

 

And that’s why going for additional shock value is unlikely to continue working. The shock-and-awe well is dry. Consumers already know the product is dangerous. In fact, that’s why some continue to buy them. What’s worse, by ratcheting up the danger appeal of cigarettes (and make no mistake, images are far more powerful than words alone), they are even more likely to appeal to a new generation of smokers.

 

These are young teens and pre-teens, already searching for an act of rebellion. These are the people most likely to not put the message in context, not look ahead 20 years, and not listen to an authority figure. These are also the young people most likely to become addicted, most likely to struggle to break the habit, and most likely to die a painful, premature death.

 

It’s profoundly sad that it’s come to this. I wish I knew the answer. All I know is that the FDA’s approach isn’t it.

 

Related links:

 

FDA: Proposed Cigarette Product Warning Labels

Branding: When Gluten-Free Is Suddenly Relevant

Key points:

1. Like most people with a wheat allergy, we were completely unaware until the diagnosis.

2. This became an interesting case study in how new customers rebuild brand preferences when their lives change.

3. What surprised me was the lack of coherent strategy on the part of major food manufacturers—they are missing a major opportunity with a potential market comprising 50 million people.

My son has a wheat allergy.

On the surface, to many of you, this may not seem like a big deal. Lots of people are allergic to lots of things. Pollens and molds are common culprits, and many of us don’t tolerate dairy, or shellfish, or tree nuts.

But wheat is different. As our family discovered, it's in just about everything. It’s obviously in most bread products. It's also in cereal, the Eggo waffles my son still craves—even ice cream. Hundreds of common foods.

The good news is that he’ll likely grow out of it. And what he has is very different than the dangerous reactions to wheat and gluten for persons with celiac disease. But the effect has been nonetheless dramatic. We struggled to figure out (for years) why his stomach was constantly upset, or why he couldn’t shake persistent atopic dermatitis (also known as eczema). As we begin to remove wheat from his diet, he is finally healing.

Since we received the diagnosis, one of the most fascinating parts of the journey has been the shopping experience.

We needed information about wheat allergies—what to buy and where to buy it. We needed it fast. So the broader question was this: Where do we get critical information when it suddenly becomes important? Put another way, we instantly became new customers for all things gluten- and wheat-free. How do manufacturers of those products welcome us into the fold? With absolutely no brand preferences, how do we establish new ones?

After some quick research, I discovered that there was no one dominant brand. The market space for wheat- and gluten-free products is a classic immature market. Several competitors, contradictory information, and wildly ranging pricing.

I also quickly learned that they don’t call Whole Foods “whole paycheck” for nothing. I think we spent more than $50 on seven items. I discovered Trader Joe’s seems to have the gluten/wheat issue (and prices) under control, sending a staff person with us on a tour of the store, sampling products as we went.

But here’s the net-net: In the marketplace for these products, “gluten- and wheat-free” equals “organic and natural.”

That may make sense to the segment of the population that already has jumped on the organic bandwagon, but it made little sense to me. I am careful regarding my health, but I am not a strict organic buyer, nor do I plan to be. What seems to be missing for buyers like me is the assumption that gluten/wheat-free need not equal a complete switch in brand preference. Why would I abandon brands I’ve known and trusted since childhood if I didn’t feel I needed to?

With a bit more digging, and careful observation on my weekend trip to Target, I came to discover some of those main brands did in fact offer several gluten-free alternatives. Cake mixes, breads, cereals, pancake mixes—more than I would have imagined.

It struck me that these brands had missed the opportunity to reach me first. Instead of the Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s of the world coming to my rescue, why not General Mills?

Some market dynamics might help us tease apart the factors.

Recent estimates claim that 14 percent of the U.S. population is wheat intolerant, and a smaller slice of that number, like my son, is wheat allergic. Street math: 50 million people. Of that number, a much smaller percentage has celiac disease (the most serious gluten allergy, attacking the intestinal tract)—about 0.5 percent. Those same studies put the number actively avoiding wheat at 3.2 million.

So, what does the data tell us? First, over 90 percent of the population with a wheat intolerance (adverse reactions ranging from mild upset stomach to persistent skin rash to pancreatic problems) are not aware of it. Count my family in that group until recently. The wheat-avoiding group (3.2 million) certainly includes many people with gluten intolerance, but also many without it who are avoiding wheat as part of a healthy lifestyle choice. I think it is that mix of people that makes marketing to this group very difficult.

Follow me for a moment. A 46.8-million-person market is no niche. General Mills and Post viscously fight over much, much less on your local store shelf. Major brands should be all over this market, but largely, they’re not. At least not out in front. Reaching those people is extraordinarily hard; like my family, we would hardly pay attention to a commercial from General Mills touting Chex Mix as gluten free (it is, by the way). They’d get a better lift in sales focusing on party mix recipes. For those 3.2 million people avoiding wheat, such a large percentage already consider themselves in the organic/natural group that mainline brands have little credibility. They are the domain of Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and dozens of other niche brands.

I’m not saying it’s easy, but if I were a brand manager for a major food brand, I’d be thinking of creative ways—right now—to work with the clinical community to identify wheat intolerance in the population. And then I would be ready with products—and more importantly, information—right when they need it.

I wouldn’t have let me discover it all on my own.

Related links:
Wheat allergy and intolerance information
Celiac disease information
Livestrong: wheat and gluten allergy information
General Mills: live gluten freely
Trader Joe's gluten-free products

Flu Fighters

Key points:

 

1. Last year, fears surrounding the swine flu, shortages of vaccine, and conspiracy theories made convincing people to get their seasonal flu vaccination tricky.

 

2. This year, the problem could be even worse due to simple apathy. The seasonal flu kills more than 30,000 people per year, but it isn't high drama.

 

3. Bagozzi’s Theory of Trying can help us peel apart the communication challenges the pros face in getting you in front of a needle.

 

What a difference a year makes.

 

Last year at this time, you could hardly turn on the television, pick up a newspaper (who does that anymore?), turn on talk radio, or read the news online without a story about the dreaded swine flu.

 

From a numbers perspective, the hoopla was largely unjustified. It seemed to strike a different population of people than garden-variety flu—adults in their prime versus the very young and the very old—hearkening back to the deadly 1918 pandemic that claimed the lives of tens of millions worldwide.

 

H1N1? Not as bad.

 

Last year, health communicators faced odd circumstances. On one hand, they faced an increasingly nervous public and limited swine flu vaccine supply. On the other hand, they faced the usual push back on vaccines—along with conspiracy-theory nut jobs who “suggested” the government had engineered the swine flu panic in order to poison people with a vaccine.

 

Let’s just say I wouldn’t have liked to be working in the communications department at the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) at that time.

 

But this year, you could say the problem is almost worse: apathy.

 

And that’s strange, because the raw statistics haven’t really changed. According to the CDC and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the seasonal flu kills roughly 30,000 Americans each year. People should take vaccination and prevention strategies seriously. They largely don’t. Why?

 

A handy tool from psychology research can help us dissect how health communicators try to attack the apathy problem. It’s called, unceremoniously, the “Theory of Trying,” and it goes something like this:

 

The psychological forces at work when you decide to get your seasonal flu vaccination are interpreted as the “action” in this model—the actual “trying.” That means getting to your appointment at your doctor’s office or getting the shot at your local Byerly’s flu shot clinic. If we back up from there, the action of trying is influenced by our intention to try. In other words, how important is it that you get a flu shot? What motivates you? These intentions, researchers have discovered, are influenced by many factors, but they seem to fall into three main groups:

 

 

 

1. Your attitude toward success:
Do you expect that by taking action (getting to your appointment, etc), you will succeed in getting your flu shot? And by that action, will you avoid the flu? Communication efforts here focus on ensuring people do not feel as though the actual shot will give them the flu. Folks at the CDC and NIH also help publish and promote studies that, for example, link seasonal flu shots to a reduction in heart disease. These all boost your expectation of the success of your eventual action.

 

2. Your attitude toward failure:
By not taking the action, will you still get the flu? In other words, will you “fail”? What’s your confidence level that the shot will actually prevent the flu? Expectations of success focus on the positive. Expectations of failure focus on the negatives. Health communicators here try hard to paint a scientifically rosy picture regarding the rates of flu among those who do and those who do not receive the vaccination. For vaccines generally, this is a vexing issue—if you do not get the vaccine, yet you do not get the flu, did you still “succeed”? Or, did your failure not matter? You can still avoid disease if most of the people around you have been vaccinated from the flu, because there will be no one to spread it to you. And to make matters more complex, how big of a deal would it really be if you did get the flu? Would you be one of the 30,000 dead?

 

3. Your attitude toward the process of trying:
This is really all about logistics. How easy do you think it is to get the vaccination? Is it cheap enough? Health communicators go out of their way to make it easy for you with convenient flu clinics. They are working to remove any mental barriers regarding the process of getting the shot. (Introducing a “flu mist” option for those who hate needles—especially kids—is another example.)

 

Of course, your attitude toward the flu shot also is influenced by subjective norms—your expectation of what others think is appropriate. That’s why people are so concerned about overly negative (and in many cases, unfounded) publicity regarding vaccine side effects.

 

Researchers and campaign evaluators tease out statistical correlations between variables, working to determine which of the three major factors is the most relevant for different groups of people so their efforts can be most effective in the shortest time and at the least cost.

 

But you don’t need to crunch numbers to see the value here. Using this handy mental tool, it’s easy to dissect the messages you’re hearing and how professional health communicators are working to persuade you.

 

That said, it’s time to get in the car. I have an appointment for my flu shot at the HealthPartners clinic in about 20 minutes.

 

Related links:
CDC Flu Information Center

Will “Corn Sugar” Change the Debate?

Key points:

1. Mainline brands have seen pressure from consumer groups and some nutritionists to remove high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) from foods. They claim it’s linked to heart disease, diabetes, and obesity.

2. Most scientists (and the industry, of course) counter that the links are correlation, not causation, and that consumers are misinformed if they think cane sugar is any different, nutritionally, than HFCS.

3. The HFCS debate won’t end with the name change to “corn sugar,” but removing the scary-sounding technical name from public consciousness will likely push the debate out of the spotlight.

Usually, I don’t notice the ketchup we buy. If it’s Heinz, I’m good. I’ve never been able to get used to Hunts, and the store brands leave a funny aftertaste. But during dinner, sitting at the table, the ingredients list stared me in the face. And there it was: sugar.

Knowing what I know about high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), that surprised me. So I checked the previous bottle of ketchup in the recycling bin, and there it was: HFCS. It had been there for decades. Cane sugar—what Heinz really means when it says “sugar”—is significantly more expensive than HFCS. But Heinz switched anyway.

I was familiar with the Heinz organic brand, which contained organic sugar, but this was one of the first mainstream high-volume products that I noticed was making the change.

Once you get a sense for the raging debate in nutritional circles and the impact it has had on sales, it’s not hard to see why.

On one side of the debate are those nutritionists and citizens who consider HFCS the next trans fat—a metabolic poison that should be removed from all foods immediately. They’ve been using discussion boards, social media, and market pressure to needle food makers into making the switch. More broadly, they have attempted to link the rise in the use of HFCS with the general rise in obesity rates in the developed world. They’ve made their mark primarily with those brands and restaurants who cater to a health-conscious crowd, notably the aforementioned Heinz, as well as bakery items at Starbucks.

On the other side of the debate are two groups—scientists (many of them) and the corn refiners industry itself (whose interests are aligned, sometimes much to the scientists chagrin).

Most scientists bristle at the notion that HFCS is any different from a nutritional perspective than cane sugar. In fact, one variant of HFCS (HFCS-42) actually contains less fructose (42 percent) than cane sugar (50 percent). They also are quick to remind overzealous bloggers that the link between HFCS and obesity over the last 30 years is correlation and not necessarily causation. In other words, it’s a logical fallacy to say HFCS causes obesity—the research is inconclusive. Many nutrition scientists don’t want to be seen as helping corn refiners push more sugar into the food system (they feel the rise in sugars and fats of all types coupled with an increase in portion sizes is the real obesity culprit). They are concerned consumers will feel as though they can simply switch HFCS for sugar and magically lose weight. Not going to happen, they say. By focusing on specific food ingredients—and not overall nutrition and wellness—consumers can become dangerously misinformed.

To paraphrase Cool Hand Luke, what we have here is a failure to communicate.

From the corn refiners’ perspective, a new name might be able to help. They are petitioning the Food and Drug Administration to allow them to rename HFCS “corn sugar.” The rationale is pretty simple: cane sugar, beet sugar, corn sugar. Sugar is sugar, and if corn sugar is the same (nutritionally) as other types, why not make the change? We don’t call it high-fructose cane syrup, do we? Even though that’s exactly what it is.

The move makes sense from a branding perspective, as well. Renaming has a long history of framing debates and making obscure concepts meaningful for the average person, especially with scientific concepts.

What's iso-butyl-propanoic-phenolic acid? Ibuprofen. Or Advil. Or Motrin.
Quantum singularity? Black hole.
Ninety-five percent dextrose and maltodextrin plus 5 percent sucralose? Splenda.
There are hundreds of additional examples.

In this case, the corn refiners are attempting to level the rhetorical playing field. By reframing HFCS as corn sugar, it hopes to compete with cane sugar, beet sugar, and other sweeteners on their own merits. Yes, eating too much of any type of sugar is a bad idea, and the overly technical sounding name HFCS has become a scary boogyman—easy to criticize and malign.

From a communication theory perspective, the name change also makes sense. The average consumer is more inclined to “elaborate” (think more deeply about) high-fructose corn syrup simply because of the scientific sound of the name. By contrast, corn sugar elicits a much lower level of thought, helping it fade into the nutritional background.

Will the new name “corn sugar” help stem sales losses from HFCS? I think it will. Removing the scary name may not appease the anti-HFCS advocates, but for most people—who just don’t pay enough attention to nuance—the new name will seem reasonable.

Frankly, I choose not to take sides in the popular debate. Some day, if I get a Ph.D. in biochemistry, I’ll feel comfortable weighing in. But I’m just an average consumer, generally concerned about my own health and the health of my family. And as an average consumer, I’m not interested in scary rhetoric about the unproven dangers of a certain food, nor am I interested in sweeter-sounding euphemisms for the same old food additive.

Calling HFCS “corn sugar” seems to make sense. But I think it makes more sense to eat less sugar in general, no matter what you call it.

Related links:
Corn Refiners Association: TV Commercial “Question Mark”
A New Name for High-Fructose Corn Syrup

The Value of Silver

Key points:

1. Silver-ion infused products are gaining popularity, but their growth has been stunted by reluctance to pay more in recession-plagued (or is it post-recession?) 2010.

2. Silver products are lagging behind their potential because it’s difficult to demonstrate how they work in a U.S. chemical market with entrenched, mature competitors and years of consumer education campaigns.

3. While the green trend could help, the price argument could be the better motivator as consumers see the value in reducing their household expenses.

My wife drank the Sleep Number Kool-Aid.

No, we don’t have a bed yet. And we don’t know our sleep numbers, but believe me, that’s coming for the holidays this year. Despite that, we must have spent $1,000 on pillows, sheet sets, and the like over the past six months.

What’s of particular interest to my wife are the silver-infused products. We own silver pillow covers and are buying a silver mattress pad shortly. The reason is pretty simple—if you’ve ever taken the pillowcase off an old pillow and taken a good, long whiff.

They stink.

Oils from your scalp, along with a healthy dose of dead skin, make their way through even the best pillowcases and embed themselves in your pillow. Unless your neighborhood dry cleaner goes to work on them every month, they begin to get funky.

But with the silver barrier, there's no hint of any odor. Silver ions are a natural antimicrobial, and they make great, natural odor protectors.

That’s why my wife was so disappointed when Sleep Number decided to discontinue its silver-infused comforter. Being nosy (love you, dear), she asked why they would do that. The answer was pretty simple: Most people don’t see the value. For them, the price premium—anywhere from 10 percent to 30 percent—is too much for what they consider a luxury item at best, and a gimmick at worst.

It might be a bit frustrating to those who do see the value, but the product manager in me sees the problem. And it’s a tough one. Actually, two tough problems.

But let’s start with the obvious red herring: the price argument.

Consumers pay premium prices for all sorts of things, many of which have much more dubious value than silver ions. In the bedding industry, see the thread count bonanza. Certainly, it’s easy to tell the difference between a 50-thread count sheet and a 200-count, but the numbers are misleading for a couple of reasons. First, the “count” ignores the quality and type of the thread itself. Mix a little silk (or soft poly) material in with a base cotton, and a low count sheet can feel like a much higher-quality one. Check the materials list for yourself. Second, after a certain number, it’s hard to make any distinction at all. But there is a striking linear relationship between price point and thread count, and consumers happily pay it—largely on perceived quality.

As silly as I think the thread count issue is, it does raise the first intractable issue for silver-infused products: demonstrate-ability.

In other words, there is no way for you to see the product working. It’s not like the old Scrubbing Bubbles advertising that showed the little bubble guys scouring away bathroom grime and soap scum. Silver-ion materials simply prevent bacteria from growing in the first place. Of course, one could imagine a television spot showing the silver-infused cloth with little germ characters frustratingly bouncing off, but I’m not sure that will happen.

And it’s because of the second intractable problem—the entrenched market for household chemicals.

Big players like Proctor and Gamble and smaller ones such as SC Johnson sell roughly $5 billion in household chemicals every year. That includes everything from bathroom cleanser to furniture polish, but it doesn’t include laundry detergent and toiletries, which occupy an even bigger market. They have built a market convincing you that ordinary soap and water is bad, and that the only way to be truly clean, germ-free, or to protect your table’s valuable finish is to purchase and use one of the many chemical wonders on your grocery store shelf. The market is so mature and so entrenched that companies fight over the tiniest of market-share movement using all manners of real and perceived innovations.

Silver-infused sheets, towels, clothing, and rags are a supremely disruptive innovation.

Please understand: I am not accusing the chemical manufacturers of some vast conspiracy to hold more effective products back from the market for fear of ruining a multi-billion-dollar scam. But I am saying that they have little incentive to promote a product that could eliminate the need—or severely disrupt the purchase cycle—for huge swaths of their product lines. I’m not sure I would.

Given those two inherent problems—lack of easily demonstrable function and an entrenched market that has spent years educating its customers—I don’t see a bright future for silver-infused products.

My only caveat might be the growing movement of removing (or drastically reducing) the number of household chemicals. This isn’t big yet, but an increasing number of households are convinced that the promise of household cleaners is a bunch of hooey, and they may even be causing harm.

Yes, you could see that as an offshoot of the green movement—because it is—but what happens when middle America decides it’s had enough of spending hundreds of dollars per year on average in home chemicals and could reduce that number by 60, 70, or 80 percent?

That seems like a pretty good value proposition to me.

Related links:

WSJ: This War Against Germs Has a Silver Lining (from 2006!)

Toning Shoes: A Triumph of Marketing Over Science

Key points:

1. So-called “toning shoes” with rounded bottoms are designed to force muscles to work harder while walking and (purportedly) boost fitness outcomes.

2. Peer-reviewed studies disagree and even show evidence that the shoe design can be harmful, but that hasn’t slowed sales.

3. As a new women’s footwear category, toning shoes represent the first potential in years for a breakthrough product that could redefine the balance of market power.

Sorry, mom.

My mother dropped by the other day with the ugliest pair of shoes I think I have every seen. Yes, far uglier than the Kangaroo shoes of my youth. These shiny new walkers struck me like some malformed orthopedic disaster.

”But wait,” my mother said. “The ‘rocker bottoms’ on these shoes tone muscles while you walk.” Just by going about her daily routine, she could get the added benefit of a mini workout. And as she keeps reminding me, it’s the little things in life that make the biggest differences over time. There was even evidence (real data) to support the salesperson’s pitch.

Touché.

However, I couldn’t escape the fact I’ve heard this kind of message before. I decided to look into it.

Essentially, while “normal” shoes are designed to reduce instability, “shape up” shoes actually seek to encourage it. By forcing your leg and core muscles to make the minute corrections in posture to maintain balance, they work harder. Not much harder with every step, but a little bit harder all the time, continuously toning the lower body. As another benefit, more work also equals more calories burned.

Win. Win. Win.

Studies from the manufacturers (Sketchers and Reebok are the big two) demonstrate the measurable impact over time. Bloggers, columnists, and several thousand buyers swear by them—my mother included.

The problem is, peer-reviewed research studies by scientists without a vested interest show they don’t deliver on those results. In scientific lingo, they note “no significant difference” in their studies. What’s worse, they say, for older adults, is that creating instability in the walking process leads to back problems, tendonitis, and strains.

But we so want to believe!

To understand why this is such a big deal, it’s important to step back and look at the market forces at work.

First, the average price of a pair of athletic shoes (especially walking shoes) has been trending downward for several years. Retailers including Kohl’s, JCPenney, and Famous Footwear have taught consumers they can get their favorite brand names at much lower prices—$50 or under in many cases.

The “rocker” shoes retail at $100 or more, doubling the average price of their flat-bottom counterparts. Sales are expected to reach $1.5 billion in 2010. In the ultra-competitive $93 billion shoe market, a 1.5 percent to 2 percent swing like this is significant. It’s even more significant when you realize the shoe market splits by gender, and women buy the lion’s (lioness’?) share. For Reebok (Adidas) and Sketchers, competing at the margins with category-leader Nike is tough.

So they created a new category. Brilliant stuff.

And the results? Stunning as well. The chart below summarizes athletic shoe sales by category. There’s no question where the growth is: For men, it’s hiking shoes. For women, it’s walkers. And look at the growth!

What’s even more impressive is the swing this new category is helping to make in the market when you compare sales by gender. While all categories are rebounding from recession, women’s shoes have come back the fastest: a 7 percent move.

For Reebok specifically, this new line represents $500 million in projected sales, making it the most successful introduction this decade, and a huge feather in the cap of the new bosses at Adidas.

But for all the marketing success, there is a risk. Will consumers think they’re being scammed by corporate science and fleeced into spending twice as much for a marketing gimmick? Nike, for one, has come out and said that it won’t risk its customers’ health and fitness with what it considers poor technology. They think their fitness partnership with Apple’s iPod is a better idea. They could be right, but if this new category ceases to remain a fad, will Nike stay out?

In the end, if the shoes help people like my mom feel more motivated to get out there and stay active, I’m all for ‘em.

Related links:

American Council on Exercise: Study Finds Toning Shoes Don’t Work

Toning Shoes Shape Up Profits, but Some Studies Suggest Results Don't Match Up

Shape-Up Shoes Not Worth It

Has It Become Unethical to Market Tanning?

Key points:

1. A recent U of M study seems to remove all doubt: Tanning—in any amount—is strongly linked to the most dangerous form of skin cancer, melanoma.

2. A combination of FDA, FTC, FCC, and state regulations will probably restrict tanning services in a variety of ways but are not likely to kill the industry altogether.

3. If tanning will still be sold (in some form), “informed consent” could be the most prudent path forward from an ethical perspective.

I am not sure why this was a surprise to anyone.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota recently published a study in which they found that people who use any type of tanning device, for any amount of time, are 74 percent more likely to develop a melanoma.

Holy crap.

Melanoma is not a more-easily-treated form of skin cancer. Melanoma is the really bad stuff. Of course, this comes as no surprise to experienced dermatologists, many of whom report an alarming increase in melanoma—especially among young people. It also comes as little surprise (sadly), they say, to mainly young women in their teens and early 20s who using tanning salons.

Yes, that could still be correlation rather than causation, but I think we’re past that nuance on this issue, aren’t we?

As I write, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is reviewing recommendations from a scientific advisory panel that would ban or severely limit indoor tanning use for those under 18. And if the feds don’t act, many states are thinking of taking up their own legislation.

Much of the discussion in the marketing field as it relates to tanning will undoubtedly revolve around how to get young people to stop using tanning salons. Much like the “Truth” campaign to attack teen smoking, any anti-tanning efforts are likely to focus on dangers of tanning, what skin cancer looks like, and how it can kill you—not years down the road, but quickly.

Not that the messaging will be easy, but I’d like to look at the issue from the other perspective for just a moment.

I’d like to pose the following questions: How will tanning salons continue to market themselves? And if they do, is it ethical to do so? If it is, under what circumstances?

The knee-jerk reaction might be to say shut them all down, much like some would like to do to the tobacco industry. But that’s not only a mental copout—it’s unrealistic. So long as tanning salons have a legal right to exist and they do not violate Federal Communications Commission (FCC) guidelines on deceptive advertising, they have every right to communicate with their audience.

Let’s start with the first question, which speaks directly to a target audience. Whether it is the FDA, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), or the states that lay down the law, the industry should count on being severely restricted in marketing to those under the age of 18.

That’s not as easy as it sounds.

The tobacco and liquor industries struggle with this as well. If you advertise, say, in Cosmo, you would be reaching (primarily) an adult female in her late 20s to early 30s. But about 16 to 18 percent of your audience will be under 18. How do you select media that will not reach who it is not intended to reach? (Let’s assume that the industry does not want to reach younger people—which certainly is not a given—but that’s a topic for a different time.)

Needless to say, this can get complicated fast. The chart below summarizes the maze of potential restrictions the tanning industry could face as it continues to communicate with its customers.

The tanning industry will need to get much better at selectively reaching its audience and more careful (creative) regarding its messaging. The problem is, the tanning industry is highly fragmented. Unlike the tobacco industry, which is consolidated into a few very large players, even the “good guys” in tanning will need to compete with a huge pool of smarmy ones.

But beyond the legality lies the more complicated ethical argument.

Assuming a combination of FTC, FDA, FCC, and state regulations will effectively remove the “under-18” ethical issue, the tanning industry still will need to address the increasingly undeniable fact that it markets a dangerous product.

One argument would couch ethics in terms of the legal lay of the land. So long as the industry does not violate society’s written rules, it has every right to exist and market within that framework.

Another argument might ask the industry to weigh the benefits of tanning (self-esteem, enjoyment, etc.) against the drawbacks (a risk, but not a guarantee, of skin conditions, including its most dangerous cancer). If the risks outweigh the benefits, so the argument goes, ethically you must cease.

A third path might raise the issue of “informed consent.” If the consumer enters the tanning salon with full knowledge of the risks and chooses to partake anyway, then there is no ethical issue. The burden would be placed on the industry to educate its customers so they can make the choice with eyes wide open.

I’m conflicted.

As a professional persuader, how could I use my abilities to help convince someone to engage in an activity I know could harm them—especially younger people? There is not only the question of a life cut short, but also the cost to society to care for very sick people when it could be avoided.

On the other hand, I am not sure I want to live in a world where someone (a government agency?) decides for me what products or services I can or cannot use. Of course, that already happens on a large scale, but how much more control do we want to cede?

My father had a way of thinking about things like this. He reminded me to be careful of having too strong an opinion on anything. The world is full of millions of colors, only two of which are black and white.

I think he’s correct. Neither position is acceptable. Salons should be able to market their product, but it needs to be controlled. Balance might not make everyone happy, but I think it’s the best answer we’ve got right now.

Related links:

U of M Study Links Tanning Beds to Higher Risk of Skin Cancer

Why Do Tornadoes Still Kill People?

Key points:

1. Early in the morning on June 7, a series of tornadoes struck the Toledo area, killing at least seven people and injuring dozens.

2. Tornado forecasting is prone to false positives (a tornado predicted, but failing to materialize), creating a cry-wolf set of scenarios.

3. In marketing, we call those scenarios "scripts," and they are a powerful predictor of a behavioral response to a predicted tornado and can inform public-safety messaging.

The scene was terrifying and sad at the same time.

Photo Credit: Toledo Blade

Last week, a set of powerful storms ripped through the upper Midwest, killing at least seven people in Ohio. Although people had ample warning about the potential severity of the storms, they struck overnight, catching people less aware than they would have been.

But did that matter?

Granted, fewer people were killed and injured in this round of storms than would have been 15 to 20 years ago, but one could argue that this number still is unacceptably high. We live in an era of much-improved (but not perfect, of course) advance detection systems.

Meteorologists—even the best ones—can misinterpret computer-modeling data. But we can, however, predict with startling accuracy the conditions under which a tornado is likely to form within a given storm cell. It's not perfect, but it is a couple of orders of magnitude more accurate than it was in the 1980s or even the 1990s.

When people say the predictions were wrong, what they are really saying is “the conditions did not result in a tornado.” It might seem like I am splitting hairs, but this distinction (confusion?) is at the heart of why these storms still have the power to catch people seemingly unprepared.

In essence, we need to ask: Why don’t people heed the warnings?

On the surface, this may seem like a science education problem. I can see that. Americans, generally, do not understand science. We don't understand what a 25 percent chance of rain means, for instance. We have trouble with scientific margin of error. We want black and white answers—there will be or there will not be a tornado—but science (in any discipline, not just meteorology) rarely can give us one.

But I think that on a deeper level, this is a human behavior problem, and one that we can understand using marketing psychology.

Specifically, I’m going to help us understand the killer tornado problem using something called a script schema.

In marketing circles, we use script schemas to help understand how life situations affect interactions with services and products.

A simple example: choosing what to eat for dinner. That choice could be understood many ways, but an important way people decide what to eat is the context (script) under which that decision is made. For example, if you are expecting guests, you may make a different choice than if you were too tired to cook at home or if you just wanted something different to eat. Marketers use this analysis to see how well their brand performs against these scenarios.

The chart below examines some common scenarios (scripts) and three choices: (1) Eating at home, (2) Davanni's Pizza and Hoagies, and (3) Olive Garden Restaurant. The scale on the left refers to the perceived appropriateness of the choice to the situation at hand.

John Eighmey of the University of Minnesota's department of Communication and Journalism did similar work with fast food restaurants. It’s an insightful way to examine how people see your brand and how your competitors stack up. From there, you can implement a strategy that addresses those strengths or weaknesses.

But let’s get back to severe weather and our tornado problem.

We can use the same method to plot scenarios alongside different choices. When we do, what may have been a bit murky becomes brilliantly clear: Our reaction is strongly influenced by the accuracy of the most recent prediction experience.

The graph is admittedly an oversimplification, and we could argue that we knew this intuitively, but if that’s true, why don’t we see messaging from public safety authorities consistently change based on the situation? Why wouldn’t news outlets adjust their strategies to be based not necessarily on the “weather facts,” but rather on the state of mind of the public?

Perhaps an interesting way to look at it.

A couple of other ideas: First, Severe Weather Awareness Week is in early April. (A swing and a miss timing-wise—that's like talking elections in August: No one cares). Second, the trend of "citizen journalists" standing outside during storms to get photos and video is probably the worst incarnation of this otherwise-promising trend. It presents storms and tornados as spectacles to be captured and rewarded with 15 minutes of fame rather than death traps to be avoided.

You could say that the answer would be better prediction, but that’s only a long-term solution. In the short term, meteorologists need to get with the script.

Related links:

Minnesota Severe Weather Awareness Week

Severe weather rakes Midwest; 7 dead

Photo Gallery: Toledo Blade

What if Acupuncture Really Worked?

Key points:

1. Scientific studies in peer-reviewed journals are beginning to uncover the secrets behind Eastern/alternative medicine.

2. These studies have significant potential to open huge new segments of the health-care market.

3. However, alternative-care providers need to stop “selling to the sold” and adjust their messaging in order to reach that broader audience.

It was a cold January day in 2005.

Luckily for me, the roads were clear for that time of year. I was driving from my office in Inver Grove Heights through downtown St. Paul to Shoreview on the north side of town for a meeting. As Highway 52 approaches St. Paul, it slows and stops to allow people to exit onto I-94 or continue onto Seventh Street.

As I stopped in traffic I noticed a 40-foot container truck bearing down in my rearview mirror. Even in perfect conditions, there was no way he could stop.

The driver hit the back end of my Acura TL at roughly 35 miles per hour.

I must have been wearing my lucky rocket ship underpants, because I walked away from it.

Or, I might more appropriately say, painfully limped away.

Nothing was broken, but everything hurt. My primary care physician sent me home with some “super-Advil” and instructions to get some rest. I took the advice. But I also took the advice of a trainer to get some chiropractic help. I didn't know much about chiropractic, but the idea seemed to make sense: mechanical help for mechanical problems.

Over the next six months, I saw my chiropractor three days per week, then two days, and then one day. I got better slowly. In the end, I can't really say whether I got better faster because of my treatment, or if I would have gotten better on my own without any special help.

My experience and my rationale—although isolated—speaks to the larger issue surrounding “alternative” medicine. This group includes chiropractic, message therapy, meditation, acupuncture, and a whole host of other treatments (many of Eastern origin).

The key question for people like me is this: Do these treatments work? And when I say “work,” I mean work in the scientifically demonstrable sense. In other words, better than placebo. More specifically, what conditions can they treat? In what dosages? With what side-effects? (Understand that I am not talking about preventative care, but rather treatment. And yes, I know there is a bigger issue lurking in there).

New research is beginning to shed light on those questions.

One study in particular, published in the highly regarded, peer-reviewed journal Brain Research, specifically addresses acupuncture.

To quote the lead researcher, Dr. Hugh MacPherson: “When a patient receives acupuncture treatment, a sensation called deqi can be obtained; scientific analysis shows that this deactivates areas within the brain that are associated with the processing of pain." Current clinical trials at the University of York are investigating the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of acupuncture for Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and for depression. Recent studies in the United States have also shown that acupuncture can be an effective treatment for migraines and osteoarthritis of the knee.

In short, the team hopes to begin to understand the neurological impact of acupuncture treatments in order to better understand how to use it as a therapeutic device in “Western” clinics.

Of course, more research needs to be done. Additionally, this study seems to conflict with other studies that say any effect is fleeting. Likely, with enough data, we’ll learn what acupuncture works for, what it doesn’t, and in what way.

What’s interesting for the marketing of alternative health care is what studies like this can mean for messaging and market segmentation.

To do that, let’s divide up the market not demographically, but psychographically. Start with three spheres of health-care behavior—Alternative Medicine, Traditional U.S.-based Primary Care, and Emergency Room/No Care. As the graph below shows, people do not neatly fit into individual buckets.

Put yourself in the shoes of someone marketing alternative health care (a chiropractic clinic, acupuncture therapist, etc). Who do you target? With what message?

Group one is obvious. They accept only alternative treatment. But that is akin to preaching to the converted. It's validating, but not a useful technique to widen your sphere of influence. Unfortunately, that is how most alternative-care providers market themselves. Their messaging assumes you already accept Eastern/alternative medicine and its tenants.

Groups four, five, and six are clearly wastes of time. They don’t take health care seriously, or if they do, are not willing to take alternative treatments seriously—no matter the evidence, at least in the short term.

In order to move into group two and group three—which represent significant new market share and profit potential, especially as Baby Boomers retire—alternative-care providers must begin to communicate more like a Western care provider and less like a spiritual guide. And that’s where studies like MacPherson’s are worth their weight in gold. Scientific studies help bridge the gap. They invite skepticism. They demonstrate the limits of knowledge. They do not over-promise. They simply say what is.

This kind of approach can help put people in groups two and three at ease. They don’t feel as though they are being bamboozled by fantastic promises of healing, but rather that they can make an informed decision based on independent evidence.

It’s not fair, but many alternative-medicine providers get lumped into the “snake-oil” category and dismissed as such.

As hard as it is to be subjected to scientific rigor, it is the path to wider acceptance for the entire alternative-medicine industry.

Related links:

Study Maps Effects of Acupuncture on the Brain