Listerine: The Newest Lifestyle Brand?

In all of our class discussions, we seem to go back to one vital marketing concept: how does a brand achieve a deep connection with its consumers? Is it through emotional or humor appeals? How about cute babies and adorable puppies? Every brand seems to find its own unique way to evoke emotion out of consumers and build a strong bond. Listerine, the well-known mouthwash brand made by Johnson & Johnson, has recently been re-branding as a "lifestyle" brand to better appeal to consumers. Listerine has been stuck at a household penetration level of 16%, and is itching to try and increase the use of its products. An article I found on AdAge further explains what this brand has been up to.

Listerine's new "Bring Out the Bold" campaign was launched on April 4th in over 80 different countries. This campaign takes consumer and brand personality and brings it to the next level. In my opinion, this recent launch relates closely to our Brand Analytics Assignment, which we just completed a few weeks ago. The purpose of this assignment was to better understand a brand on a deep, emotional level through analyzing everything from their product attributes, all the way up to their brand essence. Through this project, we were able to gain a full understanding of what kind of people purchase our brand, from their demographic profile to their self-concepts and beliefs. That same kind of extensive analysis (obviously much more in-depth), was performed by Listerine when they went back and re-investigated their brand's consumers.

To investigate, Listerine spoke with 6,000 customers in a total of six countries, half being people who use the brand, and the other half were people who do not. I think it is really interesting that Listerine did a few focus-group like activities, as opposed to just surveying consumers. I wonder how our Brand Analytics Assignment would have been different if we were able to conduct this kind of research! They took the two groups of consumers (Listerine users and non-users), and offered them both spicy/odd foods. The Listerine users were more likely to select those foods, and they were also more likely to try new sports, or do adventurous activities.

Based off of the research findings, Listerine is able to conclude a great deal of information about their consumers, that will help them engage and connect with them on a deeper, more emotional level. This "Bring out the Bold" campaign is also predicted to better reach millennials, who are said to react favorably to the "bold" and adventurous brand personality. This new campaign also shows Listerine trying to personify their brand, and bring together the inner and outer layers of their brand and their consumer. I think that this campaign is giving personality and adding hedonic value to an extremely utilitarian, non-emotional product. I think these efforts by Listerine are extremely bold themselves, but they will produce bold results and strengthen brand value!