New Product Development

90% of all new products fail. If 90% of all manufacturing, accounting or sales activities culminated in failure, the enterprise would cease to exist. Ninety-five per cent of success in new product development is getting rid of the bad ideas.

We have an extraordinary track record in developing and launching new products including a dozen top ten new products of the year. Taking a tough-minded approach to thinking through the concept and who would use it can save time and money and we have a number of proven tools including Mom™ and Step® that can help you improve your success rate.

We can give you the benefit of 20/20 hindsight before the fact and if it’s a turkey, you don’t have to ask R&D to develop it and you don’t have to ask market research to test it.

Working with Beiersdorf, we pinpointed an opportunity for the first-ever after-sun lotion. Then we launched it with provocative radio commercials. In each spot, a peppy young woman told young men, “I’m standing stark naked on (name of major street in whatever city the spot ran in). I’ve been out in the sun. Now half of me is covered with Nivea After-Sun Lotion, and the other half isn’t. Feel the difference. C’mon, feel the difference.” Nivea After-Sun Lotion became and remains a success.

Zegna was a well-know supplier of expensive fabric to the menswear industry; now it was introducing its own line of haute-couture menswear. To make Zegna stand out as a worldly brand and to convey that men who wore Zegna would stand out as worldly, our campaign showed a Zegna suit amid many “uniforms”: astronaut suits, scuba suits, motorcycle leathers, etc. The positioning was Zegna, at home anywhere in the world. The introduction succeeded; today Zegna is a leading haute-couture label.

For parents with children who’ll soon be going to college, understanding the language – and the ins and outs – of financial aid can be frightening. So we frankly used this fear to introduce Simply College: independent expert advice on how to successfully apply for this aid. Initially offered through banks such as First Niagara, today Simply College’s workshops, books and telephone help line are a huge success.

Our campaign for these three new cable channels “to help you get the best of New York,” talked the way many New Yorkers think of themselves: streetsmart. The ad above, with a fortune cookie telling you That wasn’t chicken, was headlined Ignorance of New York is no excuse. Another ad said these channels were here “So the city that causes your stress can now also relieve it.” MSG Metro Channels succeeded and then, faced with stronger competition, died.

In the late 1990s, GreenPoint told us that many Americans who could afford to buy a house were being denied mortgages because they were self-employed or retired or recent immigrants, et cetera. So GreenPoint introduced a “no-doc” (no documentation) mortgage: it didn’t ask for financial information. Our campaign spoke to the frustration of people who had been denied mortgages – and built this business for GreenPoint. In 2008-09, defaults on no-doc mortgages helped crater the U.S. economy.

University HeartScan was a new facility on Manhattan’s Upper East Side with a CT scanner that can perform a five-minute heart test and a virtual, non-invasive colonoscopy. Our campaign in Avenue Magazine, read by wealthy Upper East Siders, promoted the virtual colonoscopy by stroking our prospects’ egos and validating their concerns: “...strong men who have faced down co-op boards quake at the thought of a colonoscopy...” Our campaign helped keep University HeartScan’s CT scanner busy.

GREENPOINT BANK’S “NO-DOC” MORTGAGE