Lollipops and Lessons

K: First off, I am a huge fan of John & Kate plus 8. If you have never heard of this show, it is about how a family deals with having a set of twins and a set of sextuplets. Yup John & Kate have 8 children who only vary in age by 3 years. Ok now for my point: I've been hearing the mom, Kate, talk about how she doesn't feed her kids candy, except for organic lollipops. Really, someone is making good candy?

They are giving a free tasting April 22nd, Earth Day, at Linens-N-Things.

Yes, it seems the candy market is finding a new branch of targets: concerned parents. Even regular candy is trying to reinvent itself with a "no we aren't that bad for you" spin.

You can now find "All natural flavors" written on packaging, but really what does that mean? How do you market something that is inherently bad for you, (sugar filled candy) to a market that shouldn't really have it (kids). Change the way parents perceive it. The organic lollipops really are much healthier, but as for regular candy with new packaging the hype is unreal.

A: How does that translate to your business? You can learn a lesson on good business practices through the adaptation of a certain product to make it better (in this case, healthier). The concept that candy can be healthy is certainly unrealistic in my book, but at least the creators of the product saw a niche that needed to be filled, and jumped at the chance. The marketing of the product seems to be done in a responsible way (not making any crazy health claims, just producing a better alternative to traditional candies).

Adapting to the market is a way to stay ahead of competitors that insist on doing things "the way they've always been done," and showing your customers that you do pay attention to what they need and want. Adaptation--if done well, can get you lots of free press (therefore additional customers), respect, and push the value of your company to higher levels.

However, it is also a lesson in what NOT to do when coming up with a marketing campaign or developing your core marketing concepts. Do not give customers expectations about your product that don't exist (for example, claiming a lotion is 100% natural if it has weird chemical names that no one else can pronounce in the ingredient list). Customers will get hip to your scheme very quickly and put you out of business.

Do not give guarantees you can't live up to. Remember the Domino's guarantee that your pizza would be delivered in 30 minutes or it would be free? Delivery drivers were wrecking like crazy trying to make the deliveries on time and Domino's ended up having to settle LOTS of lawsuits with a few people even being killed by delivery drivers. In the end, Domino's had to discontinue the guarantee and do a lot of apologizing, and shell out a lot of cash. Now, their guarantee is for the quality of the pizza rather than the timing of it (which is what customers expect anyway).

Marketing should be an offshoot of your business's core principles and practices. If the heart of your business is unhealthy, your marketing will not be able to repair that. Honesty is the best policy, and if you don't truly believe in the product or service your offering, it's probably best you found a new career.