Can Colgate bring its success in the toothpaste sector over to frozen foods?
To many in the US, the name Colgate instantly brings to mind one thing: toothpaste. Yes, the cavity-fighting, sensitivity-reducing, fluoride paste boasting of whitening capabilities and a minty fresh feel sitting on everyone’s bathroom countertops.
Originally branded as a starch, soap and candle factory, William Colgate & Company established themselves in 1806. After the death of his father, Samuel Colgate launched the first Colgate Toothpaste, an aromatic toothpaste sold in glass jars in 1873 and introduced the first toothpaste in a tube in 1896. The company continued its personal hygiene products and eventually merged with leading soap maker Palmolive in 1928. Over the years, Colgate-Palmolive has become a dominant brand worldwide in personal care and household products and has even expanded to food products and industrial supplies.
Colgate is the umbrella brand focused on serving the market for oral hygiene products such as toothpaste, toothbrushes and mouthwash. More than half of households worldwide purchased Colgate brand products in 2014. If there were over 123 million households in the US alone in 2014, just think if you included the rest of the world! According to a recent statistic, Colgate toothpaste was the leader in toothpaste sales in the United States in 2019. It’s pretty obvious that Colgate is a clear winner in the toothpaste sector.
Colgate = Toothpaste.
Now let’s travel back in time to the early 1980s. At the time, Colgate was working on restructuring management as well as streamlining its long-term plan to promote a more cohesive organization. Because of advertising cutbacks and reduced spending for R&D, which led to only a few successful new products, Colgate was slowly falling behind to Proctor & Gamble, its main competitor in personal care products. Increased efforts to expand the brand were put in motion and more funds were allocated to advertising and new product research.
This is where the fun begins.
Let me introduce you to Colgate Kitchen Entrees. Yup, you read that right: Colgate and Kitchen in the same sentence. Colgate launched Colgate Kitchen Entrees in 1982 in an effort to expand its brand. They assumed that with the success of its oral hygiene line, Colgate could leverage its brand popularity and sell ready-made meals. If customers trusted the brand, why would they not want to buy the whole range of the brand’s products, whatever they may be? They can eat Colgate’s meals and then brush their teeth with Colgate’s toothpaste afterward. Perfect.
Marketed as ready-made frozen meals, Colgate Kitchen Entrees targeted working mothers and college students. This target group was too busy to cook themselves but needed a healthy convenient alternative to fuel their families and didn’t impede their busy schedules. It made sense and supplemented the existing Banquet and Swanson frozen dinner options at the time.
Customers reacted differently, however. They simply could not understand the connection between the ready-made meals and the toothpaste they’d been using the past number of years. Already a household name, Colgate’s brand name symbolized toothpaste and its ability to clean the mouth with a minty fresh feel. When seeing the brand, customers thought of the taste, too. Why would customers buy FOOD with that same name? A minty-fresh Salisbury steak? Why would they want that? Customers were confused with the brand image. They weren’t sure what to think, and thus, the product wasn’t on the frozen food shelf for very long.
Upon seeing the first image of Colgate Kitchen Entrees, I immediately drew back in disgust. “Are you kidding — what were they thinking?!” ran through my head. The problem was, they weren’t thinking. Colgate made assumptions that its brand’s success with toothpaste would carry the brand forward regardless of the product, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case. I think one reason for their actual failure was because they did just that: use the brand name to market new products. It backfired because customers associated the brand so strongly with toothpaste. Colgate has hopefully learned its lesson and stuck to oral hygiene products. In the meantime, I’ll look out for their next food product, but only if they do some research and I don’t actually know it’s a Colgate product until it’s too late.
