Hidden Marketing Champs: Cillit Bang - The Postmodern Dirt-Blaster.

Cillit Bang was launched in Europe 2004 as a late entrant in a tough sector with established super brands like Mr. Muscle, Vanish or Frosch. Today it’s an established challenger brand in the household cleaning market with a continuosly rising market share and profit margins of over 25%.

So what did Bart Brecht, head of Reckitt-Benckiser (the company behind Cillit Bang) and his marketing department do right when they built this brand?

#1: The Name 

"Who in the world would call this product by such a stupid name?" wrote one blogger. "It must be a joke. Imagine going into a supermarket and asking for Cillit Bang!"

That might be right – but as an emerging challenger an outstanding weird name seems to be a great way to make you're remembered – especially when the top brands of your segment are known as „Mr. Muscle“ or "The General".

 #2: The Target Group 

Cillit Bang is a brand that was obviously created for a rising minority of cleaning product buyers: men. Thats why you will almost exclusively see men in all advertising efforts. And you won't see any countryhouse or super-clean family mansion but shared apartments and male single households - that's Cillit Bang’s brand world.
 
You see: while the competitionen was still aiming at the traditional family models Cillit Bang found an uncontested, easy to focus and yet still huge group to target.

 

#3: The Proposition 

The Cillit Bang brand colours might be pink and flashy (remember: there are still some established category rules that were learned by the consumers for years. This means you have to deal with them as a brand - somehow) – but the whole brand screams „MAXIMUM EFFECT! POWER! FUNCTIONALITY“. Cilit bang is the "Ultimate Cleaning Tool!"

One could say the brand promise is somehow very 90ies-ish: Cillit Bang would not talk about sustainability or sea-breeze scents – but it’s so damn powerful that you could even imagine its formula is barely legal or in some kind of chemical grey zone.

From my own perspective I can tell you: this message is certainly reaching the target-group that has basically two requirement for cleaning products: They should help end the job quickly and ‚destroy’ even the biggest challenges - if it reminds me of of some kind of 'magical chemical reaction' ("Bang") even better.

 

#4: The TV-Spots

In UK the agency JWT created some great spots that first seem to be a bit dull – on the second view they are genius – especially thinking abut all the small details of execution - and have clearly done amazing work at establishing the brand.

In a very postmodern way JWT sends the core-message („AMAZING POWER“) by exploiting dozens of category- and stereotypes like the fictional testimonial salesman Barry Scott, the artificial shelves packed with Cillit Bang Products in the background or the infamous product desmonstations.

In Germany Cillit Bang took a further step this year and created an even more post-modern way of presenting its product: integrating and re-modelling all clichès you could probably think of. Including two testimonials that could also be actors from a ‚Hangover’ movie and lines like „You recreated my bathroom, dude?!?!?!“

#5 The PR

 2009 Cillit Bang gained even greater notoriety when it was revealed that its combination of sulfamic acid and phosphoric acid was so powerful a cleaning agent that it had been used to clean plutonium residue from a nuclear power station in UK.

That’s not only the best „Reason to Believe“ you can think of – this is also the material memes are made of.

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My top 5 "brand worlds" of all time (+one newcomer)

First of all: What's a 'brand world'?

- It's simply spoken the space - real or fictional - in which your brand lives or is perceived to live. And no, it’s not your headquarter - except you're Google.

Linking your brand to certain sceneries is a powerful tool to increase retentivity and underline brand values. Why? - Because it’s how our brains and especially our ability to memorize works: emotions are bound to places and places are some kind of sensorial super triggers.

By the way there is also a more practical advantage: setting a brand world will help to boost overall consistency and help to constantly structure and inspire the creative process as a quick-check reference point.

Just do the mental quick-test: Close your eyes and think about a lemonade brand with a look and feel, social media stories, print motivs or TVCs  taking place...

• in an oriental village
• in a laboratory
• in London 1930.

You will immediately picture the lemonade differently, assign related brand values - and also have a general feeling about possible brand stories. I would love the oriental village brand!

This is my all-time "Top 5 of brand worlds":

löläöä

1: Marlboro’s Marlboro Country

 

2: Beck's Northern-German coast

 

3: Tommy Hilfiger’s preppy college campus

4: Milka’s Alps

 

 

5: Paulaner's Bavarian Biergarten

 

Newcomer: otelo’s Coma Lake Club

 

The 7 central approaches for brand positioning

Product Benefits vs. Brand Ideas?

If you're working in the advertising industry or at least going to, "Positioning" will be one of the jobs you will spend a lot of time with. No matter if you're positioning a brand or a product - the question will always be "what should itstand for?".

In the classic marketing world the answer was not that hard to find: You just underlined the USP with a red marker - done! Today USPs are rare. I'm not sure if they still exist or if they're truly recognized by the customer. Hence you need a bigger toolbox to create relevance. You can even position whole brands around a 'brand idea' or a certain tonality or brand world (often achieved by a distinctive look & feel like the California College world of Tommy Hilfiger).

For those type of strategic planners who like typologies (me included), I conducted a small collection of approaches.

Seven angles for brand positioning (2015), often these approaches are mixed, too.

• In Germany - the country of engineer-perspective - positioning by using product benefits seems to be still the most favored approach
• 1&1's new campaign aiming at market leader Deutsche Telekom (klick) could be the door-opener for more competative positioning, even if it's more a promotion-campaign than a real brand positioning
• Emotionalizing brand’s by demonstrating certain attitudes is demanded by many clients right now, especially regarding the rise of branded content including brand statements (toom Respect-Campaign, postings about the US same-sex marriage judgement)

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