Marketers at S.C. Johnson & Son want you to take it outside – its Windex brand, that is – with an extension to the glass cleaner category that adds new functionality to the familiar household cleaner.

Called Windex Outdoor, this latest addition to the Windex line offers consumers easy, do-it-yourself exterior window washing. Just attach the male end of a standard garden hose to the top of the specialized Windex Outdoor bottle and a Windex/water formulation shoots out of a nozzle at the other end, dissolving and washing away tree sap, street grime and other outdoor gunk. No ladders, no squeegees, no buckets – just aim, shoot and drip dry.

The plan is to drive incremental consumption in the $17.4 million liquid glass cleaner category and further Windex’s commanding 75%-plus share of the market.

‘We’re finding, on average, that heavy cleaners were cleaning maybe two times a year, once in the spring and once in the fall,’ says Dan Lee, product manager during the launch phase of Windex Outdoor at S.C. Johnson & Son. ‘Because of the ease-of-use [of Windex outdoor], people are willing to increase their outdoor window cleaning activity.

‘If we can get that average consumer who cleans their windows once a year or twice a year to do it that one extra time, we’ve increased consumption 100%.’

Like other packaged goods companies intent on boosting incremental consumption of their products, Lee says S.C. Johnson & Son begins with pie-in-the-sky, eureka-type bursts of imagination that eventually get filtered down into marketable executions.

‘We always look for category-expanding products, and our research showed that there was an opportunity to take the brand outside the home, both literally and figuratively.

‘The way consumers clean their outdoor windows – if at all – is very cumbersome, time-consuming, expensive and potentially dangerous, so we saw these as the key levers to press when we eventually decided to launch this product.’

Cannibalization from existing Windex lines wasn’t a major concern, Lee says, since the brand’s core equity is overwhelmingly in indoor glass cleaning. He estimates only one per cent cannibalization, and that from the relative handful of Windex customers who use the indoor trigger bottle when they climb the ladder to do their outdoor windows by hand.

Launched in early March, distribution for Windex Outdoor differs from that of traditional Windex since it’s targeted to both mass-market and do-it-yourself consumers.

‘Traditional Windex, though it’s prevalent in all those classes of trade, has a lot of strength in the grocery and even drug-store channels,’ says Lee. ‘This product is not quite as strong in those. It’s there, but the consumer is more likely to be a diy-type customer who shops at Wal-Mart or Home Depot.’

Which helps explain the price point. For while it’s considerably more expensive than traditional Windex per millilitre – a 650-millilitre bottle of the indoor formula costs about $2.49, where a 950-millilitre bottle of Windex Outdoor sells for about $8.99 – it’s still a lot cheaper than hiring someone to clean your windows, a fact S.C. Johnson & Son expects will have considerable appeal with the diy, club class of trade.

Environmental concerns played a large factor in establishing the new outdoor formulation, says Kevin Rutherford, who is replacing Lee as product manager on Windex Outdoor.

‘The main difference between the two formulations is that traditional Windex is a fully diluted and ready-to-use product, whereas the formulation in Windex Outdoor is a concentrated product that you have to mix with water.

‘It’s actually a more gentle formula. It won’t do any harm to plants or animals. It’s comparable to a (hair) shampoo in terms of gentleness.’

After the product was tested in the Southern u.s. last year, it was reformulated for use in Canada and the Northern u.s., taking into account the different climate, foliage and other environmental factors that could mitigate the product’s effectiveness.

The national tv campaign for Windex Outdoor was developed by FCB Chicago, with some adaptation for the Canadian market by FCB Toronto.

Since Windex Outdoor goes beyond a traditional line or fragrance extension, the promotional strategy for the brand is heavily weighted toward trial.

‘When we brand something Windex, the initial thought is, ‘Oh, it’s just another glass cleaner with potpourri fragrance or a different color,” says Lee, ‘when in fact this is a completely different usage and a completely different technology.

‘We needed a very visual and active demonstration, which is why we did a very heavy in-store demonstration program.’