Achilles’ heel into greatest weapon

Background:

In a category that was all about product effectiveness, Soothers was seen as tasty, not effective.

Over the years, increasing competition from hardcore medicinal brands with louder voices and bigger spends had forced our core range into a year-on-year decline of four percent per annum.

For a struggling brand with little differentiation, by 2015, supermarket giant, Coles, made the decision to delete all of our SKUs (stock keeping units) except one, immediately wiping out our distribution by 30 percent. With the supermarket having made up approximately one-third of total sales in the previous year, we knew we were in a fight for our lives.