Wall Street Journal - December 8, 2000
Procter & Gamble Seeks New Markets For Tampons but Faces Cultural Barrier
By EMILY NELSON and MIRIAM JORDAN Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
MONTERREY, Mexico -- Hanging out in blue jeans and tank tops and sipping Diet Pepsi on a recent afternoon, Sandra Trevino and her friends seem very much in tune with American culture. But the young women are getting a lesson in Ms. Trevino's living room on how to use a product that is commonplace in the U.S. -- and is a mystery to them.
"We're giving you the opportunity to live differently 'those days' of the month," Karla Romero tells the group. She holds up a chart of the female body, then passes out samples to the 10 women. Tampons will bring freedom and discretion, Ms. Romero says. "For me, it's the best thing that ever happened." A few of the women giggle.
Ms. Romero is on the front lines of a marketing campaign for one of the world's most in-the-closet products. Procter & Gamble Co., the maker of Tampax tampons, pays Ms. Romero to give a primer on tampons in gatherings that resemble Tupperware parties. Assuming the roles of doctor, friend, teacher, and mother, all at once, the company makes its sales pitch in a session on how women can better understand their bodies. Its goal: to create a critical mass of Tampax users to spread the word about tampons, a product used by just 100 million of the world's 1.7 billion potential customers.
While about 70% of women in the U.S., Canada and much of Western Europe use tampons, usage falls to the single digits in a handful of countries such as Japan and Spain, and it's not even measurable in much of the world. Just 2% of women in Mexico, as throughout most of Latin America, use tampons.
P&G has wanted to expand Tampax since 1997, when it bought Tambrands Inc. for $1.85 billion in one of its largest acquisitions ever. Because North America and Europe accounted for about 90% of the $662 million in annual Tampax sales, untapped international potential was the "most important" reason for the acquisition, says Fernando Aguirre, P&G's president of global feminine care. On its own, Tambrands had tried to go global and failed. "We knew it was going to be tough, but we're always more optimistic than we should be," says Dustin Allred, head of international operations for Tambrands until 1991.
P&G believed its financial muscle would make the difference. Unlike Tambrands, the company already had extensive trucking and delivery systems in place outside of the U.S. Because P&G makes Always pads, it also had established networks of doctors and school programs and was in a good position to expand on those efforts.
Lending new urgency to P&G's international focus was the fact that in the U.S., tampon sales are flat. A growing number of tampon users have begun using sanitary napkins at least intermittently. In the past several years there's been a noticeable marketing push for pads as well as a proliferation of more comfortable and varied designs. An aging population -- who no longer need the product at all -- has also undercut sales. While Tampax is the most popular brand in the U.S., its sales are down 4% this year, according to market-research firm Information Resources Inc.
But in marketing abroad, P&G is navigating discussion of its product's imagined health risks as well as real ones such as toxic shock syndrome. Religious and cultural taboos are a hurdle: There is a persistent myth in many countries, for example, that if a girl uses a tampon, she might lose her virginity. "Everywhere we go, women say 'this is not for señoritas,' " says Silvia Davila, P&G's marketing director for Tampax Latin America. They're using the Spanish word for unmarried women as a modest expression for young virgins.
This concern crops up in countries that are predominantly Catholic, executives say. In Italy, for instance, just 4% of women use tampons. The Roman Catholic Church says it has no official position on tampons. Nonetheless, some priests have spoken out against the product, associating it with birth control and sexual activities that are forbidden by the Church. Indeed, Tampax faced objections from priests in the U.S. when it introduced tampons in 1936.
In many countries, women aren't accustomed to spending on themselves, particularly for something they'll throw out -- and that costs a bit more than pads. Women must also understand their bodies to use a tampon. P&G is finding that in countries where school health education is limited, that understanding is hard won. P&G marketers say they often find open boxes of tampons in stores -- a sign, P&G says, that women were curious about the product but unsure as to how it worked.
Until now, several P&G efforts to build its business overseas have met with failure. The company abandoned its marketing attempts in Brazil as too expensive and slow-growing, despite the promise the country initially seemed to offer with its beach culture and mostly urban population. The company also had dispatched marketers to southern India and Nanjing, China, but decided it couldn't justify the cost of expanding those tests. Most competitors, such as Playtex Products Inc. and Kimberly-Clark Corp., have basically written off creating new tampon markets as not worth the investment.
Sales Force
Looking to build a sales model that it could export to the rest of the globe, P&G began studying cities in Mexico in the winter of 1999. It figured Monterrey, an industrial hub of four million people -- with 1.2 million women as its target customers -- was a prime test spot. Logistically, it is easy to shuttle in supplies from the U.S., which is just two hours away. The city boasts Wal-Mart and several large regional supermarket and pharmacy chains with strong ties to P&G. If it couldn't crack cultural barriers to its product in this fairly Americanized city, then the problems just might be insurmountable.
The foundation of P&G's efforts is "bonding sessions," the in-home gatherings hosted by women like Ms. Trevino and led by young counselors like Ms. Romero, 22 years old, who saw the job posted on the Internet. Each guest receives a free box of Tampax, and about 40% of women who attend a session eventually go on to host one, the company says. P&G has a built a database of 15,000 women in Monterrey from sponsoring 60 sessions each week and collecting names of all attendees. It also stations Tampax counselors in 30 stores to host minisessions for shoppers.
To be hired by P&G, which enlisted a local marketing agency to locate candidates, young recruits first must promise to become regular tampon users. Most have never tried a tampon. P&G trains each woman and observes her early classes. After passing a written test, the women are equipped with anatomy charts, a blue foam model of a woman's reproductive tract, and boxes of samples. In navy pantsuits or doctor's white coats embroidered with the Tampax logo, the counselors speak in stores, schools and gyms, anywhere women gather. One counselor met with 40 late-shift women workers in a cookie factory at midnight.
At a Wal-Mart, Aida Padilla, with her hair pulled back in a tight pony tail as required by P&G, stands under a white Tampax flag at a display booth from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. each day. She is paid about $18 a day to teach an anatomy lesson with flip charts and a model and to introduce tampons to about 60 women a day on weekdays and as many as 100 on weekends. Three out of every 10 women end up buying a box of eight tampons for 18.90 pesos, or $2, she says. As a last resort, Ms. Padilla steers reluctant listeners to Always sanitary napkins, also made by P&G. An Always box of 14 sells for 24.89 pesos, or $2.60. In the cities, most women use sanitary napkins, while in the countryside and in some other developing countries such as India, many women still use cloth rags.
P&G also talks to older women, not just the older teens and young married women whom it considers its most likely customers, to dispel wives' tales passed down for generations. For example, its counselors avoid using the word "tampon," which is too close to the Spanish word tampone, meaning plug. P&G calls its product an "internal absorbent" or simply Tampax.
Early P&G research found that about half of all Monterrey doctors thought tampons were bad for women. The company blames this misperception on ignorance; the doctors, who were mostly men, simply didn't know what the product was or how it worked. Ms. Davila, the Tampax marketing director, says she asked her own doctor about tampons and he didn't know about the product.
'If Her Doctor Says No'
P&G representatives spoke to the Monterrey gynecologists association and met with the wives of 40 male gynecologists to convert them into customers, too. "If her doctor says no, she'll never use it," Ms. Davila says.
P&G sales representatives, who already call on doctors to push Pepto-Bismol, Metamucil, and other P&G products, now give doctors tampon-related charts and diagrams, as well as free samples. As a result, the company figures it has cut the number of doctors who advise against tampons to 8% from 50% in the past 12 months.
Before a visit from a P&G sales representative, Gladys Zavala, a gynecologist at a private hospital near downtown, "thought the cotton might get stuck in the body," she says. Now, she keeps Tampax display cases with free samples on the table in her waiting room and on her office desk next to a Tampax calendar and anatomy charts. Dr. Zavala says she has turned about 15 of her 50 regular patients into tampon users.
Some feminists and human-rights activists in Mexico question how P&G has handled the aspect of its product that is most troubling to U.S. consumers -- toxic shock syndrome. Public awareness, in fact, is a key reason why TSS has decreased drastically as a public health problem in the U.S.
Women became aware of the sometimes fatal bacterial disease when the number of cases increased sharply in 1980. The spike was linked to Rely, a super-absorbent tampon that P&G sold briefly but pulled from the market. Today, tampons are made differently, and women use ones with lighter absorbencies and change them frequently, researchers say. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta recorded fewer than 100 cases in 1996, the most recent data, compared with 1,200 in 1980, though it says cases may go undetected and unreported.
P&G counselors instruct women to wear the least necessary absorbency and to never keep in a tampon for more than eight hours. The instruction leaflet inside a package of Tampax details TSS. Until a few weeks ago, P&G's approach abroad was to discuss the disease only if women bring it up.
'Informed Decision'
"This company is undermining the intelligence of Mexican women," says Liliana Flores Benavides, the leader of El Barzon, a powerful Mexican workers' organization. "They have an obligation to provide all the relevant information to equip women to make an informed decision."
Tampax global marketing director, Ute Hagen, says P&G presents "all the information that is necessary so that women can make an informed choice." P&G counselors didn't raise the issue with Monterrey consumers, she says, because they wanted to "address this topic in a realistic way so it is not minimized but also not scaring women needlessly."
Following questions posed by The Wall Street Journal, P&G says it plans to change its approach. When introducing its product in new markets going forward, its counselors will talk about toxic shock syndrome before women ask, and it has retrained counselors in Monterrey to be upfront, too, Ms. Hagen says. "P&G believes that we need to treat the women around the world exactly the same," she says.
Monterrey is one of P&G's most expensive test programs, though the company declines to disclose its spending. Early results indicate its investment is paying off. Though tampons currently account for just 4% of the total market for feminine-protection products, that is up from 2% before the program. Tampax sales have tripled in the past 12 months, says Mr. Aguirre, enough to embolden executives at Cincinnati headquarters to launch the first full campaign in Venezuela a few weeks ago. It says other countries will follow.
Skipping Class
At 11:30 one recent Thursday morning, an auditorium at Escuela Industrial y Preparatoria Tecnica Pablo Livas, a public high school in a low cinderblock building off a bustling downtown street, is packed to standing-room only with 180 teenage girls. They are allowed to skip class for the hourlong presentation, promoted simply as a talk on women's issues. Ms. Romero, the Tampax counselor, runs through a slide show about the stages of puberty. She pours blue liquid through a stand-up model of a woman's reproductive tract so the girls can see what happens inside their bodies when they have their periods. They see the tampon absorb the blue fluid. Ms. Romero points to the hymen on the model and explains they won't lose their virginity with a tampon.
Ms. Romero reassures them it is perfectly normal to have trouble inserting a tampon at first. "Remember the first time you rode a bike, it was hard," she says. She stresses that the product's main advantages are comfort and freedom to do athletic activities all month. She tells them they can wear tight clothes and light-colored clothes, which they might avoid with pads. To engage the girls, she asks them, "How could Tampax change your life?" One girl calls out, "you can go to the swimming pool when you feel like it." Another yells, "I no longer have an excuse for missing gym class."
Finally, Ms. Romero instructs them to tell their friends, mothers, sisters, and aunts about Tampax. Each girl leaves with a free box of tampons as well as a postcard with P&G's hotline in case someone they know wants to host a bonding session. A school administrator says it hasn't received any parent complaints.
Still, when Maria Madalena Chavez brought home a sample from another session a few months ago, "my mother said don't use them," she says. While the 18-year-old can be rebellious -- she wears a tiny tank top, heavy-blue eye shadow, and three gold studs in each ear -- she shares her mother's doubts.
"You can lose your virginity. The norm here is to marry as a virgin," she says.
Friends and Family
Even so, many women hear P&G's pitch and are receptive. Ms. Trevino volunteered to host a gathering after seeing a demonstration at the grocery store. She picked up a P&G form that asked if she would round up 15 friends or family, all 13 or older, for an "interesting talk by a Tampax feminine health consultant" and promised a thank-you gift. At the end of her talk, the counselor, Ms. Romero, gives Ms. Trevino a tiny pearl-bead bracelet and necklace.
"I wanted my friends to have a chance to learn about tampons," says Ms. Trevino, a housewife married to an Internet company executive. "Tampons have changed my life."
P&G is putting this model to use. It picked Venezuela because it's relatively small -- 23 million people -- and its population is mostly urban. P&G gathered women in Caracas for focus groups where they expressed some cultural similarities with their Mexican counterparts, emphasizing the sanctity of virginity. But the tropical weather has fostered some promising differences, too. There's a party culture where women seem comfortable with their bodies in skimpy skirts and clingy pants.
"I won't give up my miniskirts for anything," says Audrey Dery de Lemoine, a 25-year-old newlywed at a recent P&G focus group in Caracas. "I want to wear tight pants and know that nothing is going to show."
This attitude leads P&G marketers, watching her from behind a two-way mirror, to conclude that Tampax advertising can be racier. One slogan, though, misfires. On a list of common misconceptions headed by "will I lose my virginity?" P&G wrote, "La Ignorancia es la madre de todo los mitos," which translates as "ignorance is the mother of all myths." Focus groups were offended. "In a Latin culture, ignorance and mother don't go together," Ms. Davila says. The title was scrapped.
In the end, they unveiled ads like, "Es Tiempo De Cambiar Las Reglas," for billboards, buses and magazines. The company knows that Venezuan women will catch the pun: "reglas" is the slang they use for their period, but the ad also translates as "It's time to change the rules."