Smart Car -- who's your Daddy?

What’s the best selling car in America? Not a Honda or Toyota. Or even a good, solid Ford. Nope, it’s the Little Tykes Cozy Coupe. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. With its energetic styling, youthful target market, and extreme fuel efficiency (zero gallons per mil) it’s practically a perfect ride. So, it also shouldn’t surprise us that when they made one for grown-ups it would become popular too. At least in principle.

The Smart Car is cute. Super cute. Too cute maybe for some grown-ups, but those of us with arrested development like to put a lot of cute around us, so it’s working for lots of people. It’s crazy fuel efficient and smart in many ways other than fuel: turning radius, super cool parking ability (can park head-first in parallel spaces, but you still get a ticket if you do it), safety for size, interior detailing, etc. In fact, “smart” is derived from Swatch, Mercedes and Art, with Swatch as the initial originator of the concept. Therein lies the problem: I thought is was an alternative fuel, electric, or at least a hybrid vehicle! As in zero gallons per mile or close to it! Nope. It’s just a ridiculously tight and tiny regular car. Crap. I thought that’s what would be smart about it. Makes me feel kind dumb. I’m hanging my head in shame as I write this. But should I? What we have here is a failure to communicate.

Product Communication is what the product says about its performance via design and aesthetic elements. The Swatch-inspired styling of this car overlaps heavily with design cues that communicate alternative fuel vehicles, such as Brazil’s Obvio, a car that can burn just about anything but cigarettes: gas, ethanol, or even compressed natural gas. Upon closer inspection, the Smart Car isn’t really much smarter than the average VW. They get about the same mileage as the Jetta TDI Diesel that holds twice as many people. Okay Smart Car, who’s your Daddy?

The Data:

The Smart Car entered the HotHouse with strong awareness. More than 60% have heard of it. The trial is very low, but interest extremely high netting average Conversion potential over time. The consume and produce indices are high, but there isn’t a lot of sharing going on. Perhaps leveraging web communities could bolster this. The success index overall is positive, so I would expect it to do well.

ShamWow! Sham? or Wow!

The excitement is palpable as the kids fling water all over the kitchen – the counter, the floor, and filling several large bowls. They tear open the package of ShamWow! “towel, chamois, and sponge, all in one!” and expect to be as excited & fulfilled as the on-air talent with the fake fairgrounds microphone attached to his face.

“Wow! Mom! Look at it suck up all the water from the bowl! Just like on TV!” exclaims Gillian, age eight, as she thrusts the thirsty towel into the bowl of water, wringing it out and thrusting it in again and again. Yep, just like on TV, except a whole lot of water is spilling onto the counter and all over floor.

“Yep,” says Collin, age thirteen, as he also sucks up water here and there with the over-priced-as-seen-on-TV towel product. “It sucks – water anyway.”

But wait! There’s more! More water, everywhere! Everywhere there is a flat surface – there is a lot of water left behind! A little like wiping a surface with super-sized panty hose, there is significant moisture not absorbed. Perhaps that’s why they use bowls and carpets in the demos? And, we tried using it as a bathmat as seen on TV too, where it stuck to my foot and I dragged it around like public restroom toilet paper. Now, there’s a sham! Wow!

I’ll keep ShamWow! around for carpets and large spills, where they do the initial suckage of very large amounts of liquid quite well. But to get a perfectly dry surface, a good old fashioned paper towel is probably a more effective, if less sexy choice. And, with a paper towel, you can look at the Brawny guy and not the smarmy microphone dude. Wow!

The Data:

ShamWow! has high initial awareness at 60%, but while people think it will be popular, the interest scores are moderate overall netting a conversion just over 10%. Not great for such high awareness. Perhaps drying things is not a huge unmet need in the market?

Victoria's Secret BioFit or Xbox 360 -- which better fulfill's life's potential?

“Hello Ladies.” I say as I nestle into the Victoria’s Secret BioFit Uplift Bra, my bust shaping up like Jiffy Pop about to blow. “Well, that’s a whole new thing, eh?” I whistle at myself and plunk down the plastic, trussing up some self esteem in the process.

The BioFit is strategically engineered to enhance lesser endowed women more and more endowed women less.

“So,” I ask Steve “If the A has more padding than the B, and the B more than the C – are they trying to make all boobs in the world unite and stand as one big collection of Hershey Kisses gracing boobdom without variety in size and shape? Sounds pretty boring.”

He smiles a little and glances at me from the corner of his eye. You see, he’s driving the car and I’m test driving the bra in the car, which would be less distracting if I wasn’t hiking my shirt up to show him and he wasn’t looking at the other drivers daring them to stare too hard so he can loosen their teeth.

“I don’t see how that’s possible.” He counters “You might make an A into a B, but you can’t make an A into a C, so the Associative Property breaks down . . . or is it the Communicative Property . . .” He stammers a little as I reach in to rearrange the rack into a more prominent position.

“Okay, I buy that, but do you like it?” I ask leaning forward a little, knowing this is a no win question for him. If he likes it then I wasn’t good enough without it. If he doesn’t like it then it’s a general indictment of boobs, which is not going to toast my bread either.

“Well, it’s okay, but isn’t it a little bait & switch?”

“In what way?” I say, admiring the deft side-step answer.

“Well, you know, the street appeal is huge – or at least bigger – but then, you go under the hood and . . . I don’t know. Seems disappointing.”

Hmmm…maybe he’s right about that, at least for couples who are just getting to that under-the-hood phase of the getting-to-know-each-other thing. But, hey, after 25 years of trips under the hood, what’s to disappoint?

“Okay, but do you like it?” I ask again, meaning of course, does he like it on me? “Or, said another way, does it contribute to your life enjoyment in the same way that, say, an Xbox 360 would?”

Furrowed Brow. “What kind of question is that?

“Admittedly a poorly worded, unfair, backing-you-into-a-corner question relevant to nothing other than the fact that men in my survey believe that this bra will improve life enjoyment more than an Xbox 360.”

“Well,” He says, throwing a side long smile that slices me in two. “Maybe they haven’t been under the hood.”

“Watch it.”

The Data:

The Victoria’s Secret BioFit Bra has moderate initial awareness at 40%, with women almost twice as likely to be aware than men. Conversion rates are relatively low as well. This is a real shame given men’s interest in a product designed overtly for women – or is it? While the success index is moderate also, the intensity of scores for perception of purely physical benefits that could be experienced by using the product far surpasses the XBOX 360 among men and women alike. We see the same thing for perceived health benefits. This product also provides heightened emotional benefits with high scores for men and women (nearly twice as high as Xbox 360) for product use that improves life potential. And, that’s a pretty rousing endorsement for any new product. Awareness is probably the biggest obstacle to success here.

Xbox 360 has very high initial awareness, exceeding 90% and high initial conversion rates as well. But all other measures are moderate, indicating limited potential to connect longer term with the broad swath of consumers in the marketplace.