Way to go and respond to my posts, folks. You should probably leave comments or something.

I’ve got a new group project in Consumer Behavior to finish off the semester. We have to take a Brand/Company and find it’s current target market, position in the marketplace, and come up with a new marketing plan or modify it’s current strategy. Of course this sounds fairly easy, but the problem is that my group was assigned StraightArrow’s Mane ‘n Tail. Go ahead, visit StraightArrow’s website, and you’ll see what I mean.

Notice, they make products for both reasonably attractive women and beautiful horses. Basically, we’re selling horse shampoo to people. Can you imagine visiting your friend and when using his shower, you see this bottle in his shower?

I don’t know about you, but I’d definitely come out and say, “Dude, where do you keep your horse and why do you wash it in the shower?” I guess maybe your friend has a serious hair growth problem and has a ton of hair to sustain, but it’s still a tad weird. I mean, c’mon, there’s a HORSE on the bottle!

Turns out, people buy this stuff. A lot. It just happens that Mane ‘n Tail has a reputation for growing hair faster and stronger, so people, especially girls, use it. Or they could be like a certain person I surveyed who just enjoyed the fact that she was using the same shampoo that is used on horses…

Mane ‘n Tail is for real folks. Look for it in Wal-Mart, Harris Teeter, and CVS. It’s there, I guarantee it. I’ve never heard about the stuff, but lots of girls use it. With its reputation for growing better hair, you’d think it would sell a lot better. But no, they bottle it with hideous colors and put an animal on the label. Oh wait, not just an animal, two of them, even more appealing. It’s also bottled like some commercial grade pool chemical that you put in water to make it appear more blue.

Regardless, our current strategy is looking at new packaging and most likely a new name. My first idea is to market a kid’s version to girls called Ponytail and put in a pretty pink bottle. Girls love ponies and pink, this we know.

I’m definitely going to try this stuff out as soon as I need a new bottle of shampoo, because we all know about my baldin, er, hair thinning problem…

Tell me what you think about Mane ‘n Tail, especially if you’ve used it before.