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Taking on a new roll

Written By Gigi Suhanic
Financial Post/National Post, September 16, 2005

Canadian-owned Scott Paper Ltd. Is in the unbelievable but unavoidable position of having to rebrand several well-known everyday products, its hand being forced by the looming expiration of a licensing agreement with U.S. personal hygiene giant Kimberley-Clark Corp.

Scott Paper, a division of Montreal-based pulp and paper company Kruger Inc., is less than two weeks away from launching a multi-pronged campaign including television and print ads, sponsorships and event programming, to wean consumers off the paper towel brand ScotTowel and persuade them to buy its new Canadian incarnation, SpongeTowel.

Under its licensing agreement, Kimberley-Clark, which owns Scott Paper Co. in the United States, wants sole use of long-standing brands such as ScotTowel in addition to other high-profile Scott product names such as Cottonelle bathroom tissue.

Scott Paper in Canada has until June 2007, to phase out the names ScotTowel, Cottonelle and Viva paper towels. It must also rename the company and the annual curling event the Scott Tournament of Heats. After the deadline, Kimberley-Clark has the option of reintroducing the old brands into Canada.

While Cottonelle bathroom tissue has already been renamed Cashmere, those are just baby steps in a tricky process to win some coveted brand allegiance.

Ted Matthews, managing partner with Instinct Brand Equity Coaches Inc. in Toronto, said Scott Paper in Canada has a tough job ahead of it, but it seems to him the company is going about it in the right way.

"They’re obviously starting very early ‘because they recognize they’ve got a big job at hand to transfer what was some pretty good equity," Mr. Matthews said. "You could stop anybody on the street and say, ‘What is Cottonelle?’ and they would say, ‘I think it’s a toilet paper’. And ScotTowels is pretty good too."

In anticipation of the possibility of Kimberly-Clark reintroducing the Cottonelle and ScotTowel brands in Canada following the deadline, Scott Paper in Canada is doing what Mr. Matthews believes it must do – up the ante to capture people’s household product dollars.

In advertising the new bathroom tissue brand, Mr. Matthews said Scott Paper is employing a "scorch and burn approach" by touting cashmere a s softer than cotton. "That won’t leave much for Kimberley-Clark in 2007," he said.

But it’s a necessary tactic to arrive at "owning a position" in any given category.

In the case of ScotTowels, Stephen Blythe, director of marketing for paper towels at Scott Paper Ltd., said the name change is being accompanied by some product modifications including making the towels stronger and thicker.

"The Challenge," said Mr. Blythe, "is to take the consumer on a journey through this transition and make them believe this change is happening for the better, that this product is being improved, that you can trust that the product is going to perform as good, if not better than the product you’ve already become accustomed to," he said.

Of course, what consumers are accustomed to can work against a rebranding campaign.

Specifically in the case of ScotTowel, both Mr. Matthews and Ken Wong – a marketing professor at the Queen’s School of Business in Kingston, Ont. – describe it as a utilitarian product; that it is not endowed with any premium qualities.

"Sometimes it’s very difficult to get a consumer to think of a brand as being something different from what it has traditionally been. It’s almost like there are two jobs involved," Mr. Wong said. "One is, ‘all right consumer, I want you to forget how you currently think about me and think this way.’ Sometimes consumers can’t make the leap."

Another hard task facing Scott Paper is, can it get its message to penetrate the noise and clutter in the marketplace?

"In this day and age it’s very difficult to get through to people," on a number of levels, Mr. Matthews said.

The television universe is fragmented by so many channels that it is difficult to reach a target audience in meaningful numbers. Television technology also allows viewers to block ads, mute them and jump channels. Furthermore, Mr. Matthews claims 50% of Canadians who have Internet access in their TV room, surf the web while channel-hopping.

It’s no less confusing in the average grocery store. According to Mr. Matthews, there are now 43,000 individual products on the shelf for shoppers to chose.

Given this overwhelming excess of choice, consumers are turning to brands in "self-defense" because "in this era of hyperchoice, of so many products in every category, we’re going with what we know and trust because we are happy with what we’ve got," Mr. Matthews said.

The danger exists that Canadian shoppers, denied of their Cottonelle and ScotTowels, could turn to another brand they recognize.

Said Mr. Blythe at Scott Paper: "Consumers develop emotional relationships to brands. Our job is to make sure that through our product changes, through our advertising, our marketing and communication messages we can convince them that there is no need to be concerned about transition. We are changing to make this a better product."