timberline
When the woman we were watching was being seduced and disrobed by her boyfriend, my client said, “Damn, this is going to drive ‘em crazy!” Handing him a bottle of cold water, I put the competitor’s TV spot on pause and offered, “….Or miss the woman’s R-spot completely.”
“…Zlotnick connected with the woman’s purer romantic desire, an emotion totally untapped in the men’s cologne market… very smart.”
– Timberline, MEM Fragrances
Exec Summary
Category Thinking: Women buy men cologne to be sexually seduced by the men who wear it.
New Insight: Women are looking for R, as in Romance. Something to give more meaning to sex. A moment between the sexes when all that matters is pure romance, an uncomplicated sweetness, and at the same time, a fiery hot discovery of each other. A moment when they both see the forest for the trees…at a timberline of desire.
New Position: Timberline is pure, unadulterated romantic desire.
Result: High awareness, successful re-launch, increased sales.
Full Case Study
Situation: An over-crowded fragrance category during a cluttered holiday market environment. How to re-position and re-introduce an old brand to a new, younger audience.
Category Thinking: Women buy men cologne to be sexually seduced by the men who wear it.
New Insight: Women are looking for R, as in Romance. Something to give more meaning to sex, return it to an act of love. A moment between the sexes when all that matters is pure romance, an uncomplicated sweetness, and at the same time, a fiery hot discovery of each other. A moment when they both see the forest for the trees, at a timberline of desire. The woman who buys fragrance for the man is looking for him to be totally into her R-Spot, as in the Romance she wishes he’d more actively pursue with her. The man is looking for the romance to be sexually rewarding, but at the same time he doesn’t want to be stereotyped as any more single-minded on this subject than the woman. The counter-intuitive insight here is that there is a time in romance when the couple is “allowed” to be more childlike, carefree, even silly — a time, a place, a “timberline,” when what matters most is the playfulness, the innocence that builds to a charged energy between the two and the rewards of the hunt and gamesmanship, of getting together, of getting to The Kiss, and maybe, just maybe, to falling in love. How do you introduce a new scent in a market over-stimulated by scents? How do you sell romance and sex in a way that’s fresh and different and memorably tied into this brand’s name and essence? What is the essence of this essence?
Solution: The notion of “falling” as a hard-earned relief and reward, a giving up of fronts and affectations, of stopping the chase and letting things go. Of seeing the chase in a new, romantic, even innocent way: as playful, child-like, to counter the images and pressures of the adult world. Re-Intuit and re-imagine an environment of desire that is natural, outdoors, evokes an honesty, a genuineness in the hunt itself: no trappings of the typical male-POV singles scene, but instead, a natural to the brand name, Timberline.
New Position: Timberline is pure, unadulterated romantic desire.
Result: High awareness, successful re-launch, increased sales.
