A few months back, I was driving on the highway when I realized I’d seen the same billboard over and over. I forget exactly what it said, but it was along the lines of,
“It’s time for great HEX”
It turns out Hex is a new brand of condoms. They claim to be revolutionary and better than the status quo.
Now, maybe Hex condoms really are so good that they will spread by virtue of the product quality alone. That’s their best shot, because their marketing sucks.
Condoms suck in general, and you’ve already got a bunch of brands out there. Trojan and Durex are the default, depending on where you live. Then there’s Magnum for the talented guys, as well as a bunch of alternate no-name brands you might pick up in a convenience store at 2am.
So there’s no place for Hex — unless they find one for themselves through clever positioning.
Maybe they could try to be the “Apple of condoms”… or the condom what women prefer… or the condom for the climate-conscious. But all those ideas are contrived. The real place to look for positioning is in the market.
And if you do any reading about the, ahem, male performance market, which I’ve done plenty of, you will see that most men do not complain that their condoms aren’t classy enough… or that they turn women off… or that seagulls are choking on runaway rubbers.
But there is something that many men do complain about.
Fact is, there’s a significant group of men who simply lose their erection once the condom comes on.
So maybe Hex could target the guys with poor blood flow. “Hex, the condom for pre-diabetics and others who want to avert the condom catastrophe.” Hex could even copy one of the most successful positioning campaigns of all time and say,
“Hex is only no. 4 in condoms. So why go with us? We make you harder.”
Now that’s a campaign I’d like to see as I’m driving on the highway next summer. Maybe I’ll write to the CEO of LELO, the company that produces Hex, and suggest it.
The fact is, long gone are the days when you could simply say, “New product! Why don’t you try it?”
If you are promoting something, you need a new mechanism into the mind. And often, that’s not found in the product itself. Keep this idea in your own mind, and you’ll have a much better shot at success, whether you’re promoting your own condom brand or something less shocking.