SPOTLIGHT: Hardware

Dow’s Great Stuff Benefits From Several New Design, Brand, and Market Initiatives

Enlightening research led Dow Chemical to fully expand Great Stuff’s brand and package design to fill in untapped market potentials. The new cans below communicate the use of the product better and maximize the equities in Dow’s signature red and yellow.

Several years ago, Dow Chemical looked for professional guidance when developing an ad campaign for their new product in their Great Stuff line. Great Stuff is the foam-in-a-can used to fill cracks in homes, and Dow wanted to push the new “Window & Door” variation.

When Dow first contacted the Atlanta-based creative firm of Sawyer Riley Compton, Great Stuff had a high market share but Dow was struggling with how to grow the brand. Sawyer Riley Compton is an award-winning firm recognized for its pervasive approach to solving client’s business problems. The firm quickly recognized other brand strategies that could be explored, and what started out as an advertising client soon became a packaging, shelf impact, and market context project.

Vice president account director Rich Fabritius explains that Sawyer Riley Compton prides itself in efficient research and efficient, simple packaging solutions. In this case, like many others, the question was: “How do we make it easier for people to shop and understand?” And the way to find that out is to go to the source.

Who uses Great Stuff?

“We do a lot of qualitative research first, so we get a gut feeling,” Fabritius explains. “Then we prove it quantitatively.” So they went to the stores and watched people that picked up the product, inspected the label, and put the can back down—and then asked them why they didn’t make the purchase.

During this process, they learned many things and were able to quickly identify the core users of Great Stuff. The firm affectionately calls these frugal do-it-yourself home-owners as the “huntin’-fishin’-auto-truckin’” crowd. There are many home maintenance tasks that these folks would never pay someone else to do, and filling cracks is one of those tasks.

Great Stuff was feeling heightened competition for shelf space in home improvement stores, where Great Stuff was sometimes perceived as only seasonal. Further research discovered that the company had mistakenly assumed their product was seasonal and used primarily to block cold drafts. In fact, many people purchased the product in the summer to keep out heat and bugs, and Great Stuff sold well year-round in the South, and especially Florida. Armed with that research, Dow could approach Lowes and Home Depot without apologizing for the “seasonal” consideration.

Dow Chemical even considered a color change for a time, but some enlightening research at point of purchase quickly put that notion to rest. Sawyer Riley Compton found that the majority of these do-it-yourselfers—even repeat buyers—knew the product mostly by the distinctive red can with the yellow cap, and many times could not recall the product name. The packaging was what defined the product and brand, and changing it could have been devastating to the product’s sales.

Additionally, the company was thinking about separating the product lines by going with an all blue can and cap for the “Window & Door” product and an all black can and cap for the “Triple Expanding.” Sawyer Riley Compton convinced them to go with the yellow cap across the board for its immediate recognition impact, to set apart the red color in the form of a shield on all the labels, and then define the particular product with a blue, black, or red label background.

How is it used?

In another tack, Sawyer Riley Compton suggested that Dow make a smaller version of the can, for single use. With the larger cans, a consumer used a straw attached to the can to fill in small cracks. The problem was that once you were finished with the project, the straw was unusable, all clogged with dried product.

A single use can would reduce the waste perceived by the consumer and offer a better value while retaining the well-known red and yellow brand identity. The consumer’s concern about waste was a bigger purchasing factor than anyone imagined, and the new 6-oz. can was an instant hit with the client and with consumers.

In addition to the single-use can, Sawyer Riley Compton helped Great Stuff rethink the way the label communicates with the consumer. The three products in the line were originally called “Minimal Expanding,” “Triple Expanding,” and “Window & Door.” Because “Minimum Expanding” and “Triple Expanding” are descriptions without much meaning to the average consumer, Sawyer Riley Compton helped make the product names more application specific, and changed them to “Gaps & Cracks” and “Big Gap Filler,” respectively.

Further label refinements included explaining the best use for each product right below the product name, and removing “Polyurethane Foam Sealant” from the label, which meant next-to-nothing to the average consumer. A final consideration was the price point of the retail product, and Sawyer Riley Compton sought the input of Deep Blue Insight, a strategic market research firm in Atlanta.

Deep Blue Insight looked to raise the price to a point just below where sales would drop off. The advantages of raising the price by as much as a dollar a can went beyond maximizing the profit margin. Deep Blue Insight maintained that lower prices can hurt sales because a percentage of consumers perceived low cost as an indication of a lesser quality product.

The combination of all of Dow’s internal initiatives and Sawyer Riley Compton’s efforts led to increased sales in all environments, far above expectations, and Dow was able to secure six different permanent locations for Great Stuff inside Home Depot, never again relegated to seasonal status.