The Largest Organ

9 Inch Axiom – Touch

‘The sense of touch is our oldest, most primitive and pervasive sense.  When you feel it, you believe it”

The skin on your body weighs upwards of 10 pounds.  As your largest organ it is mostly associated with touch. Touch is the first sense we experience in the womb and the last one we lose before death.  And our skin, which has about 50 touch receptors for every square centimeter, craves to be touched and it loves to feel. Smart brand marketers understand touch and pay attention to the tactile feelings their product conveys.

‘It Feels Good to Feel’

Kleenex has just launched a 10 city mall tour designed to engage consumers by leveraging the ‘sense of touch’.

The activation is called the  Kleenex Lotion “Feelspace” experience. Inside the 20′ x 20′ space visitors can touch a running waterfall, get a hand massage, or sample Kleenex tissue from wall mounted dispensers. People can also interact with a 42-inch digital touch screen by waving their hands in to manipulate images and textures.

Associate Brand Manager Dimtry Kuzin explained that Kleenex turned to an experiential event to show, rather than tell consumers, how its product works and feels.  “This was the right thing to do to get consumers to try our product,” Kuzin added. “When you feel it, you believe it.” 

Click here for the full article from Promo Magazine.

Kudos to Kleenex and the brand team at Kimberly Clark.  Interested to see how it turns out and how they measure the return on the program.  Let’s hope they look beyond traditional CPM ‘cost per thousand’ and move towards CPF ‘cost per feel’ or CPT ‘cost per touch’.

Today’s Lagniappe -  A story and some trivia. 

Story: One day as a boy I was walking with my father in the woods.  My Dad asked me a riddle, “What does a rich man put in his pocket and a poor man leave on the ground”.  After a minute or so I gave up.  Instead of giving me an answer my Dad put one finger up to his nose, pressed against one nostril, leaned over and violently blew a huge glob of snot onto the ground. 

Trivia: The material from which Kleenex is made was originally called “Cellucotton,” and was designed by Kimberly-Clark during World War I. It came to be used in gas mask filters during the war as a replacement for cotton, which was in high demand for use as a surgical dressing.  Trademarked in 1924, Kleenex was an invented name.  A few years after its introduction, the Kimberly Clark began receiving a large number of letters from customers suggesting its use for colds and hay fever. By the 1930s, Kleenex was being marketed with the slogan “Don’t Carry a Cold in Your Pocket” and its utilization as a disposable handkerchief replacement became predominant. (Source – Wikipedia) 

Kleenex was so dominant that people started to refer to all facial tissue by its brand name.  It’s become a generic term which allows competitors to use it.  That’s nothing to sneeze at as Kimberly Clark spends millions each year to vigorously monitor that its moniker is being used correctly.  Check out this list of other brands such as Zipper, Linoleum and Popsicle that have become genericized.

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