I teach a class called "The Marketing Mix," referred to by many as "The Four P's." Anyone who has taken a marketing class in the last 30 or 40 years has surely heard of the Four P's, which are product, pricing, promotion and place. Yet, it seems to me that we marketers sometimes don't think about something as basic as applying all four P's. I once worked for an executive who always thought (quite sincerely I might add) that the next promotion, especially the next commercial, for the product I was managing at the time would surely turn the brand around. It was an older product with great brand equity but declining sales. This exec was always challenging the advertising agency to give us a great campaign that would yield positive sales. Eventually we worked on the product itself. Research showed the consumers of that time did not consider the product form to be modern. We went through ad campaign after ad campaign, some of which did give a little spike and one of which actually helped slow the decline. Yet, promotion alone was not enough to make that brand a viable competitor against newer and better forms that provided the same benefit.

Looking at the food industry, did Campbell's really believe that by shipping a limited number of products, many based on frozen entrees, directly to consumers, at a very high price, it could have a great functional food entry? When we do exactly the opposite of current conventional strategy with ALL four P's we are taking a significant risk. While this is old news, Campbell's clearly took a significant risk with its "IQ" product in test market. The product has since been pulled from test.

Johnson & Johnson was heralded when it introduced "Benecol" in the U.S. The company introduced a margarine spread that lowers cholesterol with a major advertising campaign but at a much-inflated price vs. other margarines. Originally it planned to put this spread in the dairy case with other margarines, but call it a dietary supplement. The FDA would not agree to that. Now, the company has received FDA approval for a health claim based on the substance ingredient that lowers cholesterol. Let's do a little analysis. How much might J&J have spent on advertising before deciding this was not going to work? Did it have a unified, integrated marketing communication program? Midway into the program, the company decided to go through physicians. Had it considered physicians before and rejected that plan? While we on the outside cannot know all that went into these decisions-and to what degree the plan was decided by committee with an agency wanting to do one thing, a president with another contribution and a brand person trying to put it all together-what we do know is that it misfired. This often indicates the lack of a carefully planned, carefully executed strategy that allows for tweaking along the way.
Let us examine one of the four P's: promotion. For most marketers, gone are the days of getting a big-budget advertising campaign and running it until the consumer gets the message. Don Shultz of Northwestern University has been arguing for years that the big spending of the past is the old model and the new model is a fully integrated marketing communications plan (The New Marketing Paradigm, Shultz, Tannenbaum, and Lauterborn, NTC Publishing, 1993). This means, in shorthand form, that we must unify all communications to all audiences with a singular primary message. We must consider multiple points of customer contact in our plan. It also must allow for two-way communications. Thus, we integrate advertising, consumer promotion, trade support, professional promotion, publicity, placement, packaging, etc. More than just getting the message to be one message we develop a plan for each of these methods of contact.

I believe that for most nutraceutical marketers in the next decade, publicity in many forms will be just as important as advertising and packaging. In fact, publicity will be the most important communications tool for many brands but must be coupled with appropriate product information through some advertising, toll-free numbers and website information. Without a fully integrated plan working all elements of promotion a marketer is very likely to come up short.

Take another P, product. Has the product been fully tested with various messages for consumers? The product is not just the physical product. The product is the core benefit, the actual product including packaging, image and branding and the augmented product of service, ability to communicate with the manufacturer and in some cases knowledge of a potential recommender such as a pharmacist or physician. As an example of one piece of this formula, the USDA did some very nice message testing some time ago where it found that proposed health claims needed to be simple, straightforward and in a context that consumers could identify with. Have you ever observed consumers purchasing dietary supplements? I've been in hundreds of stores and stood by as consumers read labels, pondered, picked up multiple products and only a percentage of the time walked away with a product to purchase. Despite DSHEA, despite the ability of manufacturers to make statements on labels, consumers often seem con­fused. We need to make things as simple and clear as we can for them.

Finally, take place or distribution channel. Consumers are accustomed to buying food in food stores. Importantly, they are accustomed to buying certain types of food in certain grocery areas. Category management has become the tool of looking at store sections and assisting the retailer to maximize the profit potential of that section while allowing sufficient product selection. Functional foods and nutraceuticals may not naturally fit in a section. One of the reasons Tropicana has been so successful is that its product does clearly fit and add to the profitability of the section. One of the reasons Yakult has been so successful is that this very unique product needed a very unique distribution system. It is not dropped off via UPS trucks! In each case this must be tested and carefully decided.

NW

Greg Kitzmiller is a marketing faculty member at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, Bloomington, IN. He is also co-director of the Global Business Information Network (GBIN) at the Kelley School of Business. He combines international and domestic strategic and marketing management experience with university teaching, professional speaking, executive education and consulting. Mr. Kitzmiller can be reached at 1309 East Tenth St., Bloomington, IN 46405-1701; 812-855-1004; Fax: 812-855-6440; E-mail: gkitzmil@indiana.edu.