Welcome, Guest [Sign In]

June 2006 - Strategy Magazine
Who to watch

Unilever's ace in the hole
How taking risks helped Pete Pinfold turn Degree around and create meaningful brand experiences

by Annette Bourdeau
page 20

Through a series of risky marketing manoeuvres, Pete Pinfold has been able to completely turn the Degree brand around in Canada, taking its sales from double-digit decline to double-digit growth during his three-year stint as brand manager on Degree and Dove deodorants. While Pinfold, 34, has now moved to Unilever's Markham, Ont. office for a cross-functional trade sales opp, he set the wheels in motion for two ambitious brand experience projects that are in market today: the Degree Poker Championship and the Degree Fashionista Challenge. Both aim to reinforce Degree's new identity after a complete North American overhaul and relaunch, of which Pinfold led the Canadian leg.

On the Dove front, Pinfold led the much-talked-about Unilever-sponsored documentary Beauty Quest on W Network. "He took on work above and beyond what was expected," notes Erin Iles, marketing director, spreads and dressings at Unilever, who led the Dove masterbrand at the time. "He figured out how to [depict the Dove philosophy in] a documentary - he completely owned and led that project and brought it to fruition."

When Pinfold joined Degree in 2003, it was still positioned as a unisex brand, which research indicated was problematic. "Men thought Degree was for women, women thought it was for men," Pinfold explains. "The issues were very clear. What needed to be done was perhaps less clear."

A North American relaunch was already in the works, and Pinfold worked closely with his Unilever counterparts in Chicago on the project, collaboratively determining the new positioning, fragrances, packaging and other logistics. The relaunch saw the unisex products phased out, and the introduction of Degree for Men and Degree for Women. While the U.S. team decided to make the transition from unisex slowly and waited a year to put gender designations on the packaging, Pinfold opted to do it immediately. "There was some risk to doing that...but at this point we had nothing to lose.... The beauty of living in Canada is that you really can bill yourself as a test market."

But Pinfold also faced challenges unique to the Canadian market. Antiperspirants are classified as drugs here, subjecting them to restrictive marketing regulations. Luckily, Pinfold has done pharma time: His first marketing gig was at Mississauga, Ont.-based Wyeth Consumer Healthcare, where he worked on brands like Advil and Dimetapp. This knowledge came in handy on a sampling program following the Degree relaunch. Marketers aren't allowed to just give away pharmaceutical products, so Pinfold developed a DM sampling program with Shoppers Drug Mart's Optimum database, sending coupons to female lapsed Degree users and inviting them to purchase full-size antiperspirants for one cent. It garnered a high response rate, and even won the Shoppers Drug Mart award for sampling program of the year in 2004.

Pinfold is no stranger to marketing gambles: He opted to go ahead with the Dove Beauty Quest documentary in 2005, even after finding out that Unilever wouldn't get final approval. He admits it was a bit unnerving. "As a brand manager, you like to think you have control of the mix," he says, adding that he had enough confidence in W and prodco Telefactory, and their understanding of the Dove philosophy to justify going ahead with the project. W embraced the project, and even did Dove-tagged interstitial vignettes with its own personalities like Sue Johanson and Candice Olson talking about their thoughts on real beauty. The documentary debuted in July 2005 on W, has been rebroadcast twice on that net and three times on the Documentary Channel to date, and has over-delivered on audience expectations by 15%. Iles credits Pinfold with easing internal concerns. "He rallies the team around things that might be risky or scary and converts that energy into excitement," she says. "He's a great advocate for doing new, different things."

Quick Search