In the biggest diaper change in the past 10 years, Procter & Gamble is trimming its Pampers line – in the hope that offering a smaller, better selection to consumers will soak up sales.
This month, the company is introducing ‘new improved’ versions of its entire Pampers lineup of disposables that will see a decrease in the number of skus on the shelf.
A campaign from dmb&b Toronto involving television and other media will launch the new lineup.
p&g is second to Kimberly-Clark in Canada’s $700 million disposable diaper market.
While p&g is hoping its new initiative will help it make some gains on the number one spot, Dallas, Tex.-based Kimberly-Clark has followed p&g’s lead and announced some major changes to its Huggies brand.
The Huggies introduction will coincide with p&g’s.
p&g says it is moving away from boy/girl gender-specific diapers to unisex diapers so that it’s easier for consumers to choose the right product.
‘The overall benefit to consumers is they’ll be able to buy a better-performing diaper, more easily select the right diaper, and they’ll have a wider selection of money-saving large-count packs to choose from,’ says Stefani Tencic, manager of consumer affairs for p&g Canada.
‘We really want to simplify the shopping for consumers. There’s so much out there and that’s something in the past that’s been confusing for a lot of people.’
The added benefit of simplifying shopping is that it will skim down the company’s ever-growing skus.
Key to the changes in the p&g lineup is a new super-absorbent core technology that meets the absorbency needs of both sexes and eliminates the requirement for separate models.
Pampers Stretch, which is now on the market with gender-specific versions, will be replaced with a unisex model called Pampers Baby Dry.
Pampers Prints will also go unisex and rather than blue-tinted diapers for boys and pink for girls, the prints will be more generic.
The new absorbent core and unisex approach will also be used for Pampers Trainers, one-piece training pants for toddlers.
Pampers Premium, p&g’s top-of-the-line diapers introduced this January, will become Breathable Pampers Premium.
The Premium diapers were introduced as unisex models and were the first p&g product to use the new super-absorbent core technology.
The diaper has been redesigned with breathable side panels to allow air to pass through the diaper to the skin in an effort to help reduce diaper rash while maintaining leakage protection.
Tencic says the company’s research has shown that breathability in a diaper is important to parents because it prevents diaper rash.
With new Pampers Baby Dry, p&g will also introduce a new large-count package called mega-pack for diaper sizes three to five, in addition to its convenience and jumbo packs.
The mega-pack will contain about three times more diapers and have a lower per-diaper cost than the convenience pack, according to Tencic. For example, in size three, the convenience pack contains 28 diapers while a mega-pack holds 84.
Meanwhile, some of the revisions that Kimberly-Clark has announced for Huggies are similar to those of its competitor. For example, it too is adding a breathable outer cover to its Supreme diaper line and it introduced an improved absorbency system for its Huggies Ultratrim products in June.
Unlike p&g, however, the company is not chopping its gender-specific lines altogether. Instead, it’s hedging its bets by offering both unisex and gender-specific versions of Ultratrim.
The company is also packaging the white, unisex Ultratrim diapers in mega-size packages which provide three to four times the number of the convenience pack.
It is not yet known whether the new Huggies products will be available in Canada.
Advertising for Huggies in North America is handled by Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide of New York.
