Dishsoap: Branding at its Most Weird!
by Joshua Handy, Method Products
The Old Dish
Over the years, consumers have been trained by ubiquitous advertising to believe that cleaning is a chore; a boring dirty business that needs to be completed as quickly as possible. Product development efforts in the dish soap category have largely eschewed the actual task and have instead focused on adding “benefits” like softening your hands, saving baby animals, or reversing the aging process. Brand strategies seem to involve everything but the proverbial kitchen sink. By assuming that people would rather be doing anything but the dishes, marketers have transformed the category into a cluster of contextually irrelevant “meta-claims”. As such, the products in the category have languished. This is branding at its most weird and self-involved. Many dish soap brands seem to have lost faith in their core proposition – to clean dishes. It is these types of dull categories that are ripe for re-examination and re-staging.
The New Dish
At method, we think this category has gotten off-track and in our attempt to get this product right, we are launching our fourth foray into the dish soap category. Dish soap is a pillar of the company, but we have never been satisfied with our ability to balance the needs of our business, customers and consumers.
Many packaging designers will remember our iconic bottom dispensing “bowling pin” dish soap designed by Karim Rashid in 2001. The high cost and quirky nature of the design pushed us into a much more conventional execution several years later. This one we nicknamed the “Butler” and it played very close to the category. This ultimately was the reason for its downfall. ‘Not special enough!” was the protest from retailers and consumers alike. The decision was made to redesign again in an attempt to hit a sweet spot of price, form and function in the category. Our next dish soap had to be iconic and “counter-worthy”, yet conform to the category norms in terms of format. The “leaf” bottle was the result. While it looked beautiful, it quickly was likened to a “slippery fish” by people who picked up the bottle with wet hands. This simple miss allowed us to the see how blind we had become to the real challenge in the category: to serve the dish washer in search of a universally superior experience.
The realization that people do their dishes in different ways is a key consumer insight that has been downplayed by the category and we largely overlooked. Forgetting what we “knew” about doing dishes, we went back to basics. Through direct observation, we discovered that there were three main modes of dishwashing: the “fill up the sink with soapy water” mode; the “dose the soap directly on the sponge” mode; and the “pour the soap directly on the dishes” mode. None of the products on the market served all three approaches and that’s the insight we used to inspire our latest design, the “dish pump”. By simply putting the dish washing experience at the center of the proposition, and designing the soap and the package to actually help in the task, we have a product that does a great job of actually helping the dish washer. I only wish it hadn’t taken four tries to get there!
Joshua Handy is the Senior Director of Industrial Design at method products in San Francisco
Josh has worked his way around the globe, doing stints at places like Karim Rashid’s studio in NY and HWI in Australia. He’s worked in London. He’s been to the Great Wall. He’s even eaten a raw chicken in a back-alley in Tokyo.
He has a degree in mechanical engineering and a masters in industrial design and an MBA in design management, but don’t let all that fool you, he’s no overeducated-design-geek-weirdo...he’s a Kiwi.
Founded in 2000, method is headquartered in San Francisco. Today, method is the leading innovator of premium healthy home and personal care products. method can be found in more than 25,000 retail locations throughout the US, Canada, UK, France and Australia. For more information, visit www.methodhome.com
17 Comments
Reader Comments (17)
"Dish soap is a pillar of the company"
... tee hee :)
Surely, a better solution would be a container that dispenses soap from the bottom end, the one that it stands on, just by squeezing it.
"Many packaging designers will remember our iconic bottom dispensing “bowling pin” dish soap designed by Karim Rashid in 2001." I think the bottom dispensing concept was the one mentioned as first executed in 2001, no?
I remember when the Rasid design came out - it was totally eye-catching and unique and I couldn't help but buy one. The design looked good but it didn't pass the 'slippery hands test'. You just couldn't squeeze the thing when your hands were wet.
The 'leaf' iteration seems strange - it's even less ergonomic (and it looks like VO5 shampoo) - like a step backwards.
The other two including the pump fail to impress from a designer-look standpoint. I hope that the newest one wins consumers on the functionality point, but it will be easy for others to copy this idea.
Joshua, I think you guys can do better! Can't you come up with a grippy, different-shaped bottle-of-the-future? The point is to make dish washing easier, but also (maybe equally importantly) more FUN.
@AS: Oops, I missed that bit. But Joshua also says about the Rashid bowling pin design...
"The high cost and quirky nature of the design pushed us into a much more conventional execution several years later."
The concept seems ideal, other than the already squeezed shape. So why couldn't the design be dequirkyfied and the price brought down? It wouldn't require the expense of the pump mechanism and there's plenty of bottom dispensing shower gel containers on the market.
[ What's happened to the reply to a specific comment function? ]
Kudos to Joshua and the team for: 1) a remarkably candid review of past efforts, good and bad; you "told it like it is" without the kind of posturing and swagger that typically accompanies case studies, 2) a clear commitment to constant improvement, 3) a process that centers on the task at hand, and helped you get back to basics without losing sight of the brand, and 4) providing us with really good example of design leadership. Your post prompted me to take the time to write these comments, something I've never done! Thanks, Joshua!
@Michael - agreed - "candid review without the swagger". Thanks, Joshua! :)
I do like the look of your new pump bottle. It seems like I could have more control over how much soap I use as well as not have to hold a slippery bottle while washing my dishes. I'm very glad to hear you're turning away from your "Leaf" design; not to berate you too much but that bottle had too many issues! Not only was it hard to hold, the cap was quirky to open and close and was constantly clogged with soap residue! It was really a pain. I'll have to try the pump bottle soon!
How long has the 'pump' been used in hand soaps? I mean really, the most obvious solution was the pump...people were using old Dial bottles and putting their dish soap in there for decades.
And there are the sinks with the pump dispenser built in...
The Heinz ketchup upside down plastic squeeze bottle, with a silicone valve, would probably do just fine.
" Product development efforts in the dish soap category have largely eschewed the actual task and have instead focused on adding “benefits” like softening your hands, saving baby animals, or reversing the aging process. Brand strategies seem to involve everything but the proverbial kitchen sink. By assuming that people would rather be doing anything but the dishes, marketers have transformed the category into a cluster of contextually irrelevant “meta-claims”
I couldn't agree more on this ! But the major player have to find something to compete against the retailer brands, and so far it worked pretty well, even if, from a designer point-of-view, the packaging results are most of the time cheesy. Believe it or not, there are tens of thousands of people who are Ok to pay a premium for a dishwashing liquid with a hand softener/mood enhancer/whatever better integrated.
Pump is sure practical, but how much more expensive ? From my experience in dishwashing packaging design, price is the first driver, and basically everyone thought about the pump ... You can do it because you sell dishwashing liquid at a premium ...
As for the upside down/ leakage problems, dishwashing product is a bit too much liquid for the silicone valves ... maybe doing a gel instead of a liquid soap ? Also, the inclusion of a silicone (non-recyclable ) valve made the whole package unrecyclable, not so good for an ecological minded company.
As for the bottle design in itself, given the rest of your work, I'm sur you can do better/more specific !
Thanks for your down-to-earth review.
It's a little too easy to claim that "Product development efforts in the dish soap category have largely eschewed the actual task and have instead focused on adding “benefits”. Anyone who has worked with one of the major players will tell you this simply is not true. Of course Unilever, P&G, Colgate and other companies who have substantial market share pay attention to the task. Their business is too important not to do so. But for all the excitement the first method bottle generated in 2001, that was a niche product, not a game changer. It was found US consumers using that pack, but refilling it with Dawn - because the method juice didn't deliver the result. What it did do is bring the hand-dish product out from the cupboard as consumers were prepared to put it on display, which was a great result. Especially for marketer's and designer's egos. But, again, that was a minor blip in consumer behaviour, not a breakthrough trend.
The behaviour of the premium brands in the EU over the last couple of years shows this is still a commodity category, with very little price flexibility. In which case the pack has a limited role to play in the consumer relationship, and COGs is critical. The pack is not unimportant, but provided it meets some simple functionality criteria the consumer is contented. Oh, and it shouldn't look like a dog. So the question is, "how can you make hand dish premium, such that the consumer trades up?" Well, the classic rules apply: improve pack functionality (if there is consumer dissatisfaction), enhance product (either emotionally or functionally). There's the derided "benefit" - the consumer seems to be saying they prefer investing in nicer performance from the juice - anti-bac, fragrance - than in a better bottle, as they're quite happy with the generic solution - and don't see why they should pay more for enhanced functionality.
So now we have a pump from method. Firstly, this is not an innovation - pumped hand-dish product exists already. Secondly, is the product going to offer substantially better performance in a sector where current product underperforms? I don't think so. The basic product out there is pretty good at doing the job required. Does a pump address an unfilled need functionally? Maybe, for a few consumers who are prepared to pay more. But for most people, what's the big deal?
The fact is, method consumers are buying with their heart rather than logic. method offers a great upscale emotionally rich product in a not particularly exciting category. That's the good thing they're doing. If they're having problems with their pack design, its because they are not recognising that they must be making sexy design statements that their consumers must have by their sinks. It's wrong to dress this up as some kind of quantum leap in functionality and performance because other brands are not putting dishwashing at the centre of the experience. Believe it or not, if you really get to the heart of the customer usage experience you'll find the "generic" bottle is very close to a good balance of business, customers and consumers. But that doesn't mean it should look good and there's room for a player like method. But don't delude yourself into thinking your competition haven't also walked the same path as you. That's dangerous. Recognise what your consumers love you for, and build on that, not usage analysis that smacks of post rationalisation. Joshua's introduction is absolutely not a true reflection of the reality in the hand-dish industry. Don't believe what you want to believe, but look at reality - that's true of consumers and it's true of your competition.
Oh - but I do love the pump bottle on the laundry soap. And, the ingenious pink spot on the bottom that lets me make sure I get all the soap out. And, best of all, the small size that makes it nearly the only laundry soap container that will fit in the drawer of my washer pedestal. I've used Method for years because it's friendly, your convenient size just makes it that much better. Could you do fabric softener in a small pump size? 'Cause that would totally rock....just sayin'.....
http://www.greenerpackage.com/
Hey, I hated that darn "leaf" bottle, but I've got a shelf of 'em that were on sale at an awfully good price and just like the last poster, I'll buy it (lavender, cucumber, grapefruit - i never met a method i didn't like) because it works really, really well, the best, and it smells wonderful and it makes me feel happy, too.
Also the plastic seal, while great from a safety standpoint, prevents the consumer from getting a clue what the product smells like prior to purchasing.