Mentholatum

2020

Mentholatum is a global health and wellness company, with manufacturing facilities across 5 locations globally and products sold in over 150 countries. It's iconic menthol ointment is most popular during the winter season for it's utility in soothing cold symptons.

This project was part of a group submission for the course "Integrated Marketing Campaign I". The final campaign proposal was presented by the group to a panel of three judges; the presiding professor in charge of this course, and a client representative from the marketing department of Mentholatum.

The Problem

In recent years, the Mentholatum ointment faced soft momentum even with ATL investment. This can be attributed to a weakened top of mind awareness and familiarity among younger generation and newly formed household is believed to be one of the reasons of reduced usage. For many youths, the Brand image and product form might be regarded as “old” and “traditional”

The position of 家庭藥箱傍身寶 (Household medical cabinet staple) could be challenging nowadays given consumers are more well educated to use different products to treat different symptoms.
Strong advertising & media investment from OTC drug like Panadol & Fortune may have further eaten ointment’s share of mind among consumers when they need to treat Cold & Flu conditions.

As a result, sales declined in past few years and brand is losing its connection to younger generation.

The Mission

The goal of this project is to develop a marketing campaign that can rejuvenate the brand image and product usage. The focus of the campaign should be used to achieve the following objectives:

Boost incremental ointment penetration in the Hong Kong population.
Enhance awareness and increase usage frequency amongst existing customers.

The client has specifically requested the campaign to run a full year (starting March 2021). In addition, a budget of HKD$2 million has been allocated to cover all production and media spending costs.

Defining the
Target Audience

Currently, the existing audience of the ointment are mainly mothers aged 40-60. These are mainly helicopter parents well informed about medicinal products through experience. They also hold the largest purchasing power in the family for groceries and living essentials. Although this audience segment provides a steady and consistent stream of regular customers (cash cow), overrelying on these consumers would backfire on the image of the brand and it's product to appear outdated. For this reason, we believe we should challenge modern preconceptions of the product to appeal to a younger, more trendy user base.

After conducting extensive research, we have concluded that the audience segment with the greatest potential would be teens and young adults belonging to Generation Z. Key traits of this user demographic includes wellness and self-care, which means their needs can be possibly satisfied by the ointment. What’s more, they have influential power over the purchasing decision of their friends and family.

Understanding the Pain Points

For Mentholatum, we recognise a total of two pain points to tackle:

Weak top-of mind product awareness: Currently, the product suffers a weak top-of-mind awareness, which can be attributed to the consumer's limited understanding in the product's functionalities beyond alleviating cold symptoms. As a result, consumers are unlikely to think of, and thereby pick Mentholatum when choosing between similar brands
Lack of Exposure: As of now, the ointment also suffers a lack of exposure, given that already limited amount of advertisements and promotional campaigns promoting the ointment were executed to limited effect.

Our proposed touchpoints aim to tackle these two pain points, with emphasis placed on promoting awareness of the product's capabilities and raise user engagement with the brand to convert them into loyal consumers.

原來一直在我旁不分四季都咁爽

"Cool regardless of the changing seasons, turns out it was by my side all along"

The tagline of our proposed campaign is: 原來一直在我旁不分四季都咁爽 (Cool regardless of the changing seasons, turns out it was by my side all along). The concept of this tagline reminds the audience who have forgotten 1) Mentholatum's presence as a staple item in the medicinal cabinets of everyday households, and 2) The "cooling" properties of the ointment that makes it suitable for treating common ailments of all four seasons. The tagline, originally written in traditional chinese employs a colloquial play on words and a couplet rhyming scheme that makes it distinct and memorable for the local, cantonese-speaking audience.

Marketing Strategy

Based off previous market research, we have decided to take on an approach that favours the use of digital and social media strategies to remain relevant to our target audience.

Additionally, to support our campaign strategy, we proposed offline promotional activities employing guerilla marketing tactics and event marketing to engage our Gen Z target audience, many of whom value "social media and interactive experiences".

Bringing our tagline to form the basis of the campaign's theme, our proposed campaign embodies aspects of the four seasons to remind consumers the timeliness of the ointment, regardless of the changing seasons.

Projected Campaign Schedule

Our proposed campaign spans across the time of one year under two key phases. The first phase, "Awareness" runs from March to June featuring two promotional campaigns that seek to raise awareness for the Mentholatum ointment. The second phase, "Experience" would run from July to December, with an aim to engage with target users through interactive experiences. A social media content schedule is also proposed to run throughout the year and appropriately support campaign activities.

SPRING

AWARENESS

爽的定義

"What it means to be cool"

To start off our campaign, we propose a video concept exploring different people's perspective on what it means to be "cool" (爽). The word 爽 is a double entendre of both a cooling sensation and a description of feeling well. In the format of a mockumentary, the video jumps between the family being interviewed and snippets of the interviewees’ daily lives and frustrations. The scenarios felt by the actors are an indirect reference to symptoms that can be solved through Mentholatum ointment cream, however there will be no explicit reference to the ointment cream in the mockumentary. Rather, the video is designed to make the users associate the idea of the ointment being the solution to appearing "cool" . By conveying the core idea of “爽” in a humorous way, we hope our audience would find the video relevant and entertaining, eventually attracting their attention in our future campaigns.

The video would be launched around mid march to early april and it would be advertised on social media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram.

Project Highlights

Figure 2: Tagline breakdown

Figure 3: Competitor-product analysis

Figure 1: Competitors analysis positioning map

Figure 4: Draft questionnaire delivered to GenZ participants on their perceptions towards the Mentholatum brand and ointment products

Results and Key Takeaways

The presentation of this project produced the following results:

Commendation from judging panel towards my presentation skills during the pitch, being the only one to be awarded "Best Presenter" out of a class of 30 students.
Obtaining extremely positive feedback from my 5 teammates during the final peer review- obtaining full marks and positive remarks from all members of the team in my leadership and performance.

Some of my key takeaways of this project are:

Focus on the problem: At the end of the day your proposal is used as a means to solve a problem. Keeping this as a priority would allow you to craft effective marketing strategies
Leadership and Teamwork: A good leader does not assert their power over the team, but uses the role's authority to provide a coherent guiding strucutre for the team to follow along.
Group expectations: Establish internal deadlines and expectations with the team as soon as possible, so they understand the parameters of their responsibilities to the team.