Gud Happens in Personal-Care Aisle

Durham, N.C. — Research from Clorox-owned Burt's Bees suggest room for a more fragrance-driven, natural-based personal care brand that speaks to consumers in a less earthy way. Hitting the marketplace is Güd, an eight-product line that launched last month in grocery, drug and mass channels."We're trying to make natural personal-care products available to everyone," says Garrett Putman, senior brand manager for Güd. "We saw an opportunity to reach a new consumer. There are a lot of women out there today who may not be able to find products that suit their needs and sensibilities in natural personal-care products.""There was a lot of insight work we used based on who Burt's Bees is reaching today and who is not being touched," says Gabrielle Prohn, Burt's Bees public relations manager. "There are a lot of women who are getting curious about natural but not finding what they want."Many of those women, who are in their 20s, want something more scent-driven than what Burt's Bees and other brands in the category typically offer, Putman says. The Güd line includes shampoo, conditioner, body wash, body mist and foaming hand wash and is available in three scents: vanilla, orange and what the company calls "flowery." Putman says, "We felt there was some compelling white space out there to think big, think differently and bring something new to the category."Burt's Bees is using a tagline, "Güd Happens," that reflects a certain irreverence that Putman riffs on when he says dryly, "It's a twist to another common expression. … The woman who's interested in this brand has an optimistic outlook."This outlook is reflected in the path-to-purchase campaign, from the colors of the packaging to the heavy reliance on social media, Putman says. "The goal is to bring more pizzazz, with bright, vibrant packaging and a fun and unique personality, akin to what Ben and Jerry's has done in ice cream. Packaging is incredibly important to this brand. A lot of brands out there looked and felt the same, with earthy-looking color and tones and textures, and the smell of their fragrances."Burt's Bees is shipping out more than 20,000 display pieces by March, heavily oriented toward endcaps and displays, to retail partners including Target, Kroger and Walgreens. Those three chains helped the brand make final choices on fragrances through customer forums. Target will have one fragrance exclusive to its stores, while Walgreens asked for a particular PDQ design, Putman says.Burt's Bees shared drafts of the packaging and fragrances last spring, and "retailers did not bring specific insights of their own to the table so much as we've grown our knowledge together," Prohn says. "Everyone saw the opportunity to bring new people into this category. Retailers were very much in line with our insights."The digital elements to the campaign, launched in concert with Raleigh, N.C.-based agency Baldwin&, include banner advertising on relevant websites, a new site called Güdhappens.com, a "significant push" on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube – Burt's Bees has nearly 900,000 fans on Facebook – and QR codes on the back of packages that link to a mobile site that explains the products and scents and provides coupons."We've got a pretty robust sampling plan, with hundreds of thousands of samples on our Facebook page, and an area where [the target customer] can come and learn about the brands and learn about the personality," Putman says. "It could be a coupon, it could be a sample, it could be a ringtone or wallpaper – but it will appeal to this woman and what she's interested in. She lives her life on social media. … Digital media is really important to our communications strategy."Burt's Bees will measure the campaign's success through metrics like number of Facebook fans, number of "Likes" and overall "how engaged consumers are in the social media presence," Putman says. "How are consumers interacting with those samples and coupons? Are they coming back to the website? Are they giving us good reviews?"

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