Sexual Wellness Products: Cautiously Aggressive Marketing

A Chicago-area Walgreens store recently began stocking Church & Dwight's Trojan brand vibrators alongside condoms on a back wall near the pharmacy counter, prompting one store associate when asked about it to answer, "I'm not happy about it." She explained that some of the store's older shoppers are uncomfortable seeing those products while waiting for their prescriptions. (Walgreens would not comment for this story, citing competitive concerns.)Chainwide, Walgreens earlier this year supported a national "Date Night" campaign from Johnson and Johnson's K-Y lubricant brand, promising discounted movie tickets with purchase of $25 in K-Y products. (See Related Articles.) Walmart had an overlay as well.In general, mainstream U.S. retailers are steadily devoting more shelf space to sexual wellness products, while trying to attract shoppers with related promotions. Marketers aren't quite toeing the line that had been previously drawn in this category, because the line is moving. "People are becoming more comfortable buying sexual wellness products such as lubricants and personal massagers in a traditional retail environment," says Krista Devlin, team leader for category development at the Mississauga, Ontario, offices of Reckitt Benckiser, maker of the Durex condom brand.To capitalize, product manufacturers are lavishing their brands with attractive new package designs to go along with greater marketing and promotional dollars. "This category, from a retailer perspective, has the potential to grow explosively," Devlin says. "We know online sales are already very strong, but as more people seek out the products in stores, there's a huge opportunity for brick-and-mortar retailers."Nonetheless, retailers and manufacturers need to proceed with caution as they continue to bring more attention to these once taboo-laden products. "There are widely varying degrees of comfort on both the consumer and the retailer side," says Ken Harris, chief executive officer of Kantar Retail Americas. "It's going to take a long time for people to feel completely comfortable with the category."A recent campaign for Ansell Healthcare's LifeStyles SKYN condoms suggests we're headed in that direction. As part of that effort, Ansell released a TV spot featuring a scantily clad young woman staring into the camera and saying, "I love sex. And I don't like condoms." Additionally, amid a sea of ads for Broadway shows in New York's Times Square, a large billboard features another beauty offering a thinly disguised pitch: "I always notice what a man is wearing."These alluring and unusually frank ads have arrived at an opportune time. Seemingly everyone from Dr. Drew Pinsky to Rush Limbaugh is talking about contraception, and the conversation is a welcome backdrop for marketers of sexual wellness products.Purchase Drivers, Brand LoyaltyBecause many of these products are sold at independent retailers in the adult/novelty trade channel (as well as online), there is no reliable tracking service, and exact sales figures are difficult to find. However, industry estimates peg the sexual wellness category at roughly $1 billion in global annual sales. The male contraceptives segment in the U.S. grew 6.5% to $420.3 million in the 52 weeks ended Feb. 9, 2012, per Chicago-based market research firm SymphonyIRI Group, which monitors supermarkets, drug stores and mass retailers excluding Walmart.Last fall, Reckitt Benckiser commissioned Chicago-based market research firm InContext Solutions to learn more about how consumers shop for sexual wellness products in various types of retail stores and under different merchandising scenarios. The studies were conducted in Canada over a two-week period; the company also plans to validate the research in the U.S. market this year. "It's a total category approach," Reckitt Benckiser's Devlin says. "We wanted to understand all of the factors that encourage category growth, including trip drivers and how sensitive shoppers are to pricing in different channels."In one test – an online 3-D simulation of a generic store environment – participants were asked to shop for condoms, lubricants and vibrating rings in an aisle that contained four different shelving configurations. (There were a total of 1,200 participants, 300 for each configuration; 43% were male, 57% female.) "You could click on the products, rotate them or read the fine print, put them in your basket and continue shopping," says Rich Scamehorn, chief research officer at InContext Solutions, which also administered a follow-up survey to determine how the different aisle setups impacted attitudes toward the products as well as product selection.The trial revealed, for example, that the largest basket sizes were driven by shelves with condoms placed at the bottom, lubricants on top and devices in the middle. That result may come as a surprise to store managers who place condoms at eye level to draw shoppers into the category and relegate the potentially more controversial items to lower levels, Devlin notes. "There's still a bit of a question about how receptive some consumers are to seeing the devices in stores, so some stores put them on bottom shelves so that only shoppers who are looking for them, find them."Additional research has uncovered a surprisingly high level (20%) of brand switching in the condom category, says Carol Carrozza, vice president of marketing communication at Ansell Healthcare.The typical 18- to 30-year-old male condom shopper, while brand loyal, also tends to make last-minute decisions at the point of purchase and may be influenced by "style" factors such as thin/ribbed material as well as package design, says Carrozza. "We call it a distress purchase. It's not typically on a young male's shopping list before he enters a store. People are looking for a brand they can trust – meaning, you use it once, and it's got to work – but they are also willing to try other brand names that they know and pay up for those brands." (LifeStyles SKYN price points are in the category's upper range.)Peer recommendation is another important purchase driver, which is why Ansell has been conducting sampling at events such as the South by Southwest Music Festival, which takes place each spring in Austin, Texas. Clinical trials had shown a positive response to the softer polyisoprene material used in LifeStyles SKYN condoms, creating an obvious talking point for a brand that markets itself as "The closest thing to wearing nothing." The recent ad campaign, dubbed "This Changes Everything," includes two national TV spots, billboards and digital banners on male-oriented websites such as YahooSports.com and CollegeMarketing.com."The feedback on the ads has been overwhelmingly positive," says Carrozza, noting the brand's surges in Facebook "Likes" (up over 300%) and website visitors (200%).Packaging and MerchandisingWomen age 24 to 42 are the core buyers of products like massagers and vibrators, and manufacturers are catering to this demo in their marketing and product packaging. Trojan's Vibrations brand, for example, employs humorous TV ads that highlight the female sexual experience and takes its colorful package design cues from the cosmetics industry, says Dan Bracken, director of marketing services at Church & Dwight. The Vibrations line, which added several new SKUs in 2011-2012 and is sold in mainstream drug stores such as Walgreens and CVS/pharmacy, is driving growth in the category, with sales up 43% in a three-month period early this year.Trojan also recently introduced a new premium Midnight Collection of vibrators and massagers that are sold exclusively at adult/novelty stores and through online retailers like AdamandEve.com. These brick-and-mortar stores present a unique challenge for the brand, says Bracken. "Adult shops are typically a very cluttered environment. Most stuff is done on paint boards, and products are just hung on the wall, so shoppers have to find things for themselves."Trojan turned to Allendale, N.J.-based Henschel-Steinau to develop a merchandising solution for the Midnight products. The company produced a heavyweight floor unit (more than 100 pounds) and counter displays that replicated the deep-purple feminine packaging of the brand. The floor units integrate LED lighting above each of their polished acrylic trays and featured product testers for hand sampling. "Since the ergonomics of the product are extremely important, we incorporated acrylic product glorifiers with changeable graphics to draw attention to the tester products on each shelf of the display," says Gary Forman, president of Henschel-Steinau. "We incorporated the same design philosophy we use in an upscale health and beauty aids display for major retailers such as Macy's or Bloomingdale's."Bracken says Church & Dwight has been working with its Trojan sales reps and retail customers to improve the quality of its product education and communicate the brand's message better with shoppers.At mainstream retailers, condoms and related products are being displayed in ways that reflect the particular chain's customer base. Some 7-Eleven stores, for example, use a center-aisle with a "Performance" sign to group various condom brands with energy drinks and protein pills – a nod to that chain's core young-male demo – while new Walmart Express outlets typically feature a more conservatively themed "Family Planning" section with K-Y products and a wide assortment of prophylactics.

Sexual Wellness Products: Cautiously Aggressive Marketing

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