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How to Package Your Message to Ensure It Keeps Going, and Going, and Going

What we can learn from consumers’ confusion about the Duracell and Energizer bunnies. From Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive

Who am I? I’m pink. I’m a toy rabbit. I have a drum. And I’m powered by a brand-name battery that outlasts the competition. Who am I?

Depending on where you live, I’m either the Energizer Bunny or the Duracell Bunny. Confused yet? You’re not alone. The very first pink, battery-powered bunny with a penchant for persistent percussion on television was actually the Duracell Bunny. To be more accurate, it wasn’t a single bunny, but rather a whole species of toy rabbits — the Duracell Bunnies — whose power was said to be longer-lasting than that of any other brand of battery. In one commercial, for instance, a number of drumbeating toy rabbits, each powered by a different brand of battery, slowly come to a standstill, leaving only one — the one powered by Duracell — still literally full of energy.

Over fifteen years ago, however, Duracell failed to renew its trademark in the United States, which allowed its competitor, Energizer, to swoop in and trademark its own pink, alkaline-powered drumming bunny in an effort to mock the Duracell campaign and claim its products’ superiority. This is why, these days, North American television viewers are accustomed to seeing their bunnies running on Energizer, whereas it’s Duracell for those in the rest of the world.

In the Energizer television commercials, viewers think they are watching an advertisement for another product (Sitagain Hemorrhoid Ointment, for example), which is interrupted by the Energizer Bunny walking through the frame to the narration of, “…still going, and going, and going, and going…nothing outlasts the Energizer.” Despite the early public and critical acclaim that these commercials received for the Energizer Bunny’s off-the-wall and into-other-commercial antics, there was just one problem: Many people, even those who loved the commercials, couldn’t remember which company’s batteries were being advertised. In fact, one survey showed that, even out of viewers who chose the bunny ads as their favorite commercials of the year, an astonishing 40 percent were certain that the ads were for Duracell. This was the case even though there are plenty of features that distinguished the Energizer Bunny from its coppertop counterpart, including bigger ears, sunglasses, a larger drum, fur that’s a brighter shade of pink, and flip-flops.

Confusion between the two companies’ bunnies certainly played a role in this problem. But, as it turns out, even many people who’d never seen the Duracell commercials misremembered which brand sponsored these newer commercials, thinking it was Duracell. In fact, shortly after the ads became popular, it was Duracell’s market share that grew, while Energizer’s shrunk a bit.

What action should Energizer have taken to prevent such a problem from occurring in the first place, and what lessons can we learn from it? The psychological research is clear: Placing a memory aid on store displays and the actual packaging of their product — for example, an image of the Energizer Bunny with the text “Keeps going and going and going…” — would do much to correct consumers’ faulty memories as well as product choices that they made based on those incorrect memories. And that’s exactly what the company eventually did, with great success.

What’s the implication for marketing in general? Increasingly, companies try to brand themselves via extensive media campaigns that emphasize the key element of their brand (e.g., durability or quality or economy) through a story character that epitomizes that element. They assume that viewers will connect their products with the branded element while exposed to the ads, which is a reasonable assumption provided that the ads are properly constructed. They also assume that viewers will recall the connection when ready to buy — and that’s a naïve assumption. Consumers’ memories, subjected to hundreds of thousands of these associations in the course of modern life, aren’t up to the task — at least not without the assistance of point-of-purchase cues that revive the desired connection. It’s for this reason that any major advertising campaign needs to integrate the essential images, characters, or slogans of the ads into the in-store product displays and product packaging the consumer sees when making a purchase choice. Although changing the display and packaging to match the central features of the media campaign may be more expensive in the short term, it’s essential.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Robert B. Cialdini is the author of the bestseller Influence and the president of INFLUENCE AT WORK (www.influenceatwork.com). Steve J. Martin is the Managing Director of INFLUENCE AT WORK. And Noah J. Goldstein is a faculty member at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. Together they are the authors of Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive (Copyright © 2008 by Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. Martin, and Robert B. Cialdini).