The brand is Milk Duds, a product of Switzer Clark. Milk Duds is a candy product that comes in a little yellow and brown box. It had a reputation as a “movie” candy for teenagers, but the company wanted to broaden its Milk Duds business to include the younger crowd.
The first step in any positioning program is to look inside the mind of the prospect.
And who is the prospect for Milk Duds? It’s not some little kid who doesn’t know the score. Research indicates that the best Milk Duds prospect is a sophisticated candy buyer. He or she has been in and out of candy stores several hundred times at least.
The average Milk Duds prospect is 10 years old. A cautious, suspicious, shrewd purchasing agent who is always on the lookout for value received.
Most positioning programs are nothing more or less than a search for the obvious. Yet the obvious is easy to miss if you zero in too quickly on the product itself. (As with the “purloined letter” of Edgar Allan Poe, the obvious is often hard to find because it’s too easy to see. It’s too obvious.)
What’s in the prospect’s mind when the subject of candy comes up? Not Milk Duds, even though the average 10-year-old kid might be vaguely aware of the brand.
For most 10-year-olds, the candy urge immediately conjures up the concept of candy bars.
Candy bars like Hersheys, Nestlés, Mounds, Almond Joys, Reeses, Snickers, Milky Ways. Put there, of course, by the millions of dollars’ worth of advertising spent on these and other candy bar brands.
Since Milk Duds was getting only a small fraction of that kind of advertising money, it would have been hopeless to try to build a separate identity for the brand. The only way to drive Milk Duds into the kid’s mind was to find a way to reposition the candy bar category.
In other words, find a way to make the millions of dollars spent by the competition work for Milk Duds by setting up the brand as an alternative to the candy bar. (Little would be gained by just putting another candy name in an overloaded mind.)
Fortunately, there was a glaring weakness in the candy bar competition that could be exploited. And the weakness is obvious once you look at the size and shape and price of today’s Hershey bar.
A candy bar just doesn’t last very long. A kid can go through a 50-cent Hershey bar in 2.3 seconds flat.
There exists a strong undercurrent of dissatisfaction among America’s candy eaters. As the candy bar has shrunk in size, this discontent has grown.
“My allowance doesn’t last very long when it comes to candy bars.”
“Either I’m eating faster or candy bars are getting smaller.”
“You can suck up a candy bar awfully fast these days!”
This is the soft, chocolaty underbelly of the candy bar competition.
Milk Duds are different. They come in a box instead of a package. They give the kid 15 individual slow-eating chocolate-covered caramels.
Compared with a candy bar, a box of Milk Duds will last a long time. (If you try to stuff a whole box in your mouth, it will cement your jaws shut.) Which is exactly why the product has been so popular in movie theaters.
So what is Milk Duds’ new position?
Why, it’s America’s long-lasting alternative to the candy bar.
If this seems like the obvious answer to you, it wasn’t to the people who used to do the Milk Duds advertising. In some 15 years of Milk Duds’ television commercials, there wasn’t one reference to the long-lasting idea.
Let’s take a mental walk through a 30-second television commercial to see how the long-lasting idea was sugarcoated for the benefit of the 10-year-old.
1. Once there was a kid who had a big mouth … (A kid is standing next to an enormous mouth.)
2. … that loved candy bars. (The kid is shoveling candy bars one right after another into the mouth.)
3. … but they didn’t last very long. (The kid runs out of candy bars and the mouth gets very upset.)
4. Then he discovered chocolaty caramel Milk Duds. (The kid holds up the Milk Duds, and the mouth starts to lick its chops.)
5. The mouth loved the Milk Duds because they last a long time. (The kid rolls the Milk Duds one by one up the mouth’s tongue.)
6. (Then the kid and the mouth sing a duet together, which is the campaign song.) When a candy bar is only a memory, you’ll still be eating your Milk Duds.
7. Get your mouth some Milk Duds. (Big smiles on both the kid and the mouth.)
Not only did the television advertising reverse a downward sales trend, but in the ensuing months the company sold more Milk Duds than it ever did in its history.
If there is one important lesson to be learned from the Milk Duds example, it’s this: The solution to a positioning problem is usually found in the prospect’s mind, not in the product.