Addressing an underperforming launch

Key results

Best-in-class intervention plans that improved sales by 25% and was scaled internationally on multiple brands.

Diagnosed the core user, market, and business problems on an underperforming initiative. Then created and executed a holistic digital & in-store action plan that improved sales by 25% and was adoped as best practice by headquarters.

Data Analytics.

Financial ROI Analysis.

Storytelling.

Marketing Strategy.

The Challenge

I joined the Herbal Essences team in time to execute a multi-million dollar packaging transition that would drastically change the iconic shape of the shampoo bottles that had been synonymous with Herbal Essences since 2006. Not only was the bottle shape changing, the ‘Shampoo’ was turning into ‘Hair and Body Wash’.

My instincts told me that without a communications plan in place, such a large change would be disastrous but by the time I joined the team, it was too late to stop. What I could control was product metrics, so I developed a dashboard to accurately track results so I could relay data back to headquarters in a timely manner and influence change if my instinct proved right.

My data dashboard revealed that the transition was causing sales to drop to 60% their previous levels. In a couple months, retailers would be making decisions on which products to take off their shelves. I had to act now.

The Process

01- Detecting the slow launch

One of the most important aspects of a product launch is to understand if it has met both business targets and the intended user outcomes. I made this a top priority as I knew I would have to sell any product or marketing ideas to headquarters with robust data. In creating the tracker:

I wanted to understand if the initiative as a whole was meeting targets, as well as how it was doing by retailers. To do this, I was interested in understanding what % of the sales were from our new products versus our old products.
Because it was such a large transition and not all retailers carried all products, I also picked out 2-3 star products that all retailers carried to give me a comparable read on product-level performance.

Ultimately this revealed that even when new codes had successfuly been rolled out on shelves, at a total initiative AND star product level we were selling at 60% last year’s volumes and significantly underperforming targets.

This chart helped us see our absolute target, rolling averages and weekly performance

By Feb 29, our new products started to replace old products on shelves, however were still underperforming targets. This incredibly slow ramp up told us that consumers preferred and were purchasing older product.
March 14 spike was an anomaly observed across the category due to panic stockpiling for Covid19

02- Analyzing data & consumer insights

Given the drastic performance and the urgency, I used a hypothesis-driven approach, making the most of the data we had on hand.

First I gathered preliminary data on which sizes, scents, and retailers were driving most of the loss.
- This revealed that decline was steady across all retailers and our regular sizes, top scents and shampoos were driving majority of decline.
Then I identified the factors that could impact performance: loss of shelf space, sales promotions, marketing on our premium lineup, flyer features, and a myriad of consumer reasons.
- This revealed that although loss of shelf space and flyer features were a contributor to decline, we were still declining disproportionately more than the respective space lost. We were also declining more on regular weeks than promotional weeks, hinting that there was a larger problem with consumer demand.

Next I drew out an issue tree to identify my top hypotheses and the data I would need to gather to validate or disprove them.
- What the disproportionate drivers of decline had in common was that these sizes and items had VISUALLY changed the most. Regular sizes moved from the wavy to the apothecary bottle shape whereas large sizes stayed in ‘pump bottles’, and shampoos were now called “Hair + Body Wash” on pack.
- Immediately this looked to me like consumers were struggling to recognize their old products, and that the inclusion of “Body Wash” was probably unappealing to many.
I collaborated with the User Researcher to assess call center data, reviews, and previous consumer qualitatives to validate the hypotheses
- This confirmed that consumers were unable to find their old product, and furthermore that especially given the pandemic were resorting to familiar brands they trust.
- We also validated that communicating ‘hair and body wash’ in lieu of ‘shampoo’ made many consumers upset.

03- The consumer journey

Next I plotted out the consumer journey and realized we were failing the consumer at every possible touchpoint.

Not only was there zero outbound communication to reach those currently using the Herbal Essences product or shopping for a new shampoo, loyal consumers who were confused and tried to reach the North American helpdesk were told to check out the website, which had no information at all about the conversion. We were losing consumers left right and center.

04- Assessing options for an action plan

I assessed and decided on tactics after hosting a series of discovery calls with various agencies, retail teams, distribution centers and leading team alignment meetings, based on the following factors: predicted impact, ability to target our specific demographic (due to cannibalisation risks), time to market, cost, and risks and mitigations.

To meet my budget, I had to estimate costs based on limited information. On the left was how I estimated the cost of neckhangers- the # of stores X the # of units per store (the average stock depth of shelves, the low side and high side number of facings-ie. shampoos visible) X the hours it would take X the cost per hour

05- Influencing upwards and gaining incremental funding

I presented to headquarters and senior leadership and brought consumer and market realities to life with data.

My objectives were to gain alignment on:

New marketing assets
Influencing product roadmap to change ‘hair + body wash’ back to ‘shampoo’
Call center and consumer relations responses
Get incremental funding

I worked with legal, R&D, finance, sales and managed relationships with 5 agencies to execute the final action plan.

I successfuly influenced headquarters to revert back to ‘Shampoo’ and also gained incremental funding to pilot my action plan.

06- The action plan

The plan was designed to reach consumers at every point in their journey to maximize our overall absolute reach over a short period of time. Our business goal was to minimize hurt over the next few months to prevent retailers from taking our products off their shelves.

It was so consumer-driven and successful that headquarters recognized my action plan as best in class, scaled it globally and replicated it on other brands.

To reach consumers either currently using our product or other brands, I launched a number of email and retail partnerships to incentivize trial of the new bottles, always highlighting the message that these were the SAME products, in new bottles. The objective here was to raise **awareness** of the product change so that if they tried to find it later on they wouldn’t be surprised and incentivize **conversion**.

For in-store tactics, I chose a mix of shelftalkers, neckhangers, and display stickers to achieve national coverage of our messaging, with the objective of increasing **consideration** at shelf, so a consumer wouldn’t turn away because they couldn’t find the bottle shape they recognized.

For e-commerce, I used a dual strategy to direct consumers on the old product page to the new product page, as well as provide a visual reference of the old product in the new product pages.

Lastly, to improve searchability and reassure **loyal** consumers, I copywrote a FAQ page for our Canadian website and created a banner on our homepage, because we knew loyal consumers who couldn’t find their product frequented our website. I passed this to the US consumer relations team as a starting point and it was used as the official response guidelines.
**Advocacy** wasn’t a priority for this product lineup because our long-term strategy was to build up our premium sub-brand. We merely wanted to stabilize losses from this lineup.

06- Executing with excellence

Short timelines meant I received pushback from all agencies and people involved, but part of executing with excellence as a product manager is to know when something is crucial for the business and to not take no for an answer. There is always another way to achieve a certain goal- you might just need to innovate and discover through smart questions. On the flip side, to enable my agencies and teammates, I also helped them prioritize what work could be paused to accommodate, or where we could make do with existing creative instead of creating net new content.

In the end, we launched the plan in 2 months from inception to execution (6X faster than P&G average), and I was recognized from both US and Canadian leadership teams for breaking a record in execution time for an initiative of this size. This approach was replicated in the following year by all North American haircare brands going through a packaging change.

When something’s crucial for the business, a product manager can’t take a simple “NO” for an answer

07- Evaluating Impact

I used the following framework to assess the results of initiatives. I looked at all of the tactics by retailers, and provided recommendations of where it would make strategic sense to support tactics even under negative ROI circumstances (for example if we were trying to hold our shelf space at a certain retailer), and where we should ask for additional funding due to an expected positive ROI .

Overall, the intervention was successful. We achieved strong retailer buy-in and kept all our products on retailer shelves. On top of that, we saw sales increase by 11-40%.

08- Pursuing further growth

As a business owner, my overall objective is to grow my brand year over year. Given the underperformance of this relaunch, I wanted to pursue further growth and outline strategies that would compensate losses and set up the brand sustainably in the long run. To do this,

I launched a $6M subbrand to accelerate tradeup and our growth with a new market
I created a national “Save Herbal Essences Plan” with my internal team, opening with a sensitivity analysis of how different scenarios would impact our targets and which retailers made up majority of the gap. This plan also detailed what the brand priorities should be for each retailers (eg. priority for Walmart is getting X product to X% distribution), with detailed tactics broken down by quarter (X displays in 1st quarter, X promotion in 2nd quarter), as well as additional marketing tactics we could pursue, analyzed based on cost effectiveness and strategic impact (eg. an email marketing partnership with WM or one of WM’s shopper programs may have X reach at X cost).