Brand Failures

266 Brand failures
interview. ‘An idea that was effective a generation ago would fall flat, stale,
and unprofitable if presented to the public today. Not that the idea of today
is always better than the older idea, but it is different – it hits the present
taste.’
Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Pear’s remained the leading
soap brand in the UK. However, towards the end of the century the market
was starting to radically evolve.
In an October 2001 article in the Guardian, Madeleine Bunting charted
our love affair with soap:
Over the past 100 years, soap has reflected the development of consumer
culture. Some of the earliest brand names were given to soap; it
was one of the first mass-produced goods to be packaged and the subject
of some of the earliest ad campaigns. Its manufacturers pioneered
market research; the first TV ads were for soap; soap operas, tales of
domestic melodrama, were so named because they were often sponsored
by soap companies. Soap made men rich – William Hesketh Lever,
the 33-year-old who built Port Sunlight [where Pear’s was produced],
for one – and it is no coincidence that two of the world’s oldest and
biggest multinationals, Unilever and Procter & Gamble, rose to power
on the back of soap.
Recently though, Bunting argued, a change has emerged. The mass-produced
block has been abandoned for its liquid versions – shower gels, body washes
and liquid soap dispensers. ‘In pursuit of our ideal of cleanliness, the soap
bar has been deemed unhygienic,’ she claimed.
Of course, this was troubling news for the Pear’s Soap brand and, by the
end of the last century, its market share of the soap market had dropped to
a low of 3 per cent. Marketing fell to almost zero. Then came the fatal blow.
On 22 February 2000 parent company Unilever announced it was to
discontinue the Pear’s brand. The cost-saving decision was part of a broader
strategy by Unilever to concentrate on 400 ‘power’ brands and to terminate
the other 1,200. Other brands for the chop included Radion washing powder
and Harmony hairspray.
So why had Pear’s lost its power Well, the shift towards liquid soaps and
shower gels was certainly a factor. But Unilever held onto Dove, another soap
bar brand, which still fares exceptionally well. Ultimately, Pear’s was a brand