You might always drink the same brand of beer, eat the same kind of snack cracker and drive the same make of car. But chances are you don’t always use the same brand of shampoo.

This fact both frustrates and pleases the manufacturers of hair-care products.

While the lack of brand loyalty makes resting on one’s laurels an impossibility, it also means that new products stand a good chance of attracting an audience – at least temporarily.

The trouble is, there’s only so much hair in this country to wash, condition and style. As a result, the $450-million liquid hair care market has done what most people fear their hair will do on a date – namely, gone flat.

Some manufacturers are hoping to change that by throwing their marketing muscle behind premium hair-care products. While Canadians aren’t likely to add more goop to their hair, the thinking goes, they may be persuaded to use somewhat pricier goop.

Call it part of the ‘inexpensive indulgences’ phenomenon.

That, anyway, is what Heather Francis of Toronto-based Alberto-Culver Canada credits for the success of her company’s TRESemme 4 + 4 Professional Formula line of products.

‘In this economy, I may not be able to afford to go out and buy a fur coat, but I can buy good-quality hair care products,’ explains Francis, product manager for both TRESemme and the company’s mass-priced Alberto European brand.

The five-product TRESemme line, which includes shampoo, conditioner, mousse, hair spray and a gel mist, was launched nationally in June and, according to Francis, was embraced enthusiastically by both consumers and retailers.

The latter is of particular significance, she says, because retailers generally don’t like to see additional hair-care products vying for space on already-crowded shelves. But they make an exception for the premium hair-care segment, whose price point – somewhere in between traditional hair care products and higher-priced salon products – lures beauty-conscious female shoppers into the stores.

‘We saw that the premium segment [estimated at $16 million in Canada] was growing,’ says Francis.

TRESemme formulations are already sold to salons in the u.s. and the u.k. But Alberto-Culver decided that Canada should have its own formulations, to be sold in regular retail outlets.

(The numbers in the brand name refer to the four conditioning and four hydrating ingredients in the formulation, says Francis, who adds that a scientific-sounding name lends a certain cachet to premium brands.)

The simple, clean-looking packaging, created by Toronto-based Savage Sloan Design, is intended to convey salon quality.

As for advertising, Francis says the challenge was ensuring that it would underscore the premium positioning of the brand, while also making clear that the price point isn’t outrageous.

Bozell Worldwide of Toronto came up with two black-and-white ads that have run nationally in women’s magazines. Both have a 1930s Hollywood-glamor feel. The first, which appeared in September issues, features a blond model with suitably stunning hair, and a tag line that reads, ‘Now you can look the part before you even get the part.’ The second features a brunette model, and the tag ‘Finally, hair care that recognizes fame often comes before fortune.’

Alberto-Culver also did extensive in-store promotions, in the form of coupons and pre-pack stands which carried the same message as the print ads. Francis says the company sold a record number of pre-packs during the launch period, and has plans to launch new line extensions over the next couple of months.

When it comes to selling premium hair-care products to a mass audience, Procter & Gamble is something of an old hand.

Stefani Valkonen, supervisor of public affairs for p&g in Toronto, says the company’s higher-priced Pantene brand was first launched in the u.s. in 1945, and made its way to Canada in 1983. p&g also sells the ‘salon-style’ Vidal Sassoon line of products.

Valkonen says consumers expect a lot more today than simply clean hair. ‘They’re looking for little luxuries that let them pamper themselves.’

Because there’s little consumer loyalty in this crowded category, having something new on the market – and getting it noticed – is key, Valkonen says.

‘You’re continually trying to meet the consumer demand with something that hasn’t been [available] before,’ she says

p&g’s most recent bid to please the fickle public was the introduction of Pantene Flexible Hold Hairspray with Elastesse in September. With its tag line ‘Feel your hair, not your hairspray’ (the tv creative was developed by Grey Advertising of Toronto), Flexible Hold promises to keep a style in place without the telltale stickiness of conventional hair sprays.

‘That’s an area where there wasn’t a lot out there for consumers,’ says Valkonen. And of course, for those who are convinced there’s nothing wrong with flypaper hair, there’s still Pantene’s regular hair spray formulation, Ultra Firm.

Louis-Alexandre Laferriere of Cosmair Canada in Montreal says that he, too, sees consumer demands evolving over time as products become more sophisticated.

‘It’s very much a crowded category,’ says Laferriere, product manager for L’Oreal’s premium Vive brand and its new children’s brand. That makes it difficult – and expensive – for companies to make their mark.

‘There’s a lot of money being spent to be a player,’ he says.

But play Cosmair does. ColorVive was introduced in 1990 as a product specifically formulated for the needs of colored hair. It sold for $10 a bottle and, according to Laferriere, occupied a small niche. Since then, the price was dropped (to about $5 or $6 a bottle) and it now sits comfortably as the No. 4 premium brand in terms of market share, with sales of 1.4 million units annually.

Cosmair is now working on improving the performance of the brand extensions – FortaVive, HydraVive and (new this past year) BodyVive.

Cosmair has hired supermodel Claudia Schiffer to hawk BodyVive, and has plans to introduce yet another brand extension in 1998, with tv and print advertising to come.

Laferriere says there’s not yet a lot of equity behind the Vive brand itself. Instead, each brand extension is marketed as an individual brand, with its own advertising and loyalty programs.

‘It’s very hard to build a [premium] brand,’ he says. While brand switching is the norm in the category, the real trick is getting consumers to consider spending a few extra dollars on their shampoo.

‘The question always becomes, `Are they ready to pay for it?” says Laferriere.

Also in this report:

* Launch of Children’s Advil no child’s play: Generating trial a challenge in OTC category because parents tend to be cautious p.15

* Rx manufacturers start spreading the news: Must now target brand messages to a number of different audiences p.18