Case Study: Method Home Products
Eric Ryan is the founder of Method Home Products, a $100 million turnover home-products business that uses interesting messages and a strong and clear tone of voice to communicate its sometimes radical viewpoints. Method’s attitude is communicated powerfully through effective use of copy, and this is one of the core factors behind its outstanding success. Here Eric tells us how the brand was created, and how it uses language to gain competitive advantage.
explaining how our brand is different in every sense
Method had to be a challenging brand, a challenger brand. It had to do things differently to stand out from the competition in a crowded marketplace, and had to make customers think differently about the home products they use. Most consumers are on autopilot when they shop. We used our voice, messages, and language to challenge the status quo.
I’m a strategic planner, not a writer. I’m a terrible writer, but can tell good writing when I see it. I write copy briefs from a strategic point of view, giving as much content as I can. My skill is in creating the big idea that the creatives can develop and bring to life.
Maintaining our tone of voice across our product range is a challenge. We have products in all areas, from candles to detergent. The objective is to achieve consistency with the messages and information on every product, but to be honest we can’t get there. We strike a balance between doing the best writing possible for each product, and representing the brand voice accurately and clearly. We know we don’t need the copy to look the same, or read the same, on every product, it just has to feel the same.
Merchandising and the way we display and market products in-store is a very important part of our business. We try to utilize every touch point for the customer, giving them clear messages to ensure they understand our environmental credentials. We have a small budget for marketing, and the copy we use has to work very hard for us.
The Approach:
speaking our mind and standing for our beliefs
Our personality, which is about questioning and being rebellious, comes from us and the attitude that formed the business in the first place.
The name Method came from my original brief. I’m from a branding background, and I wanted a “jumping off” word to say we get the job done, with less force. Our inspiration was the word “technique,” as by using better techniques we can reduce the need to use strong detergents or chemicals that harm our environment. Adam, in our team, suggested “method” and we all agreed it was a good fit.
The voice of Method was developed by our advertising agency, Crispin Porter, with two aims: it had to be fun (in a category not associated with fun) and had to be both provocative and likeable.
Our agencies (Shire and TBWA), together with our freelance writers, look after all copywriting for us; we now have an in-house writer too. We’re trying to find our “Dan” [Dan Germain, Innocent, pages 76–8], someone who can instinctively control our tone of voice and push it forward without losing core values.
Where we can, we like to have fun with product names and be more creative. Creating a combustible cleaning cloth from corn, we called the range Omop to make it sound distinctive. We’re following the lead of companies like Apple who make product icons that become part of our culture. Whatever you do, you can’t overcomplicate things. It’s about keeping it simple to make it stand out and be memorable.
The basic structure to our pack copy is that it must be a single sentence. In Canada rules state we have to include extra information, and have it in French too. It’s a real challenge to be simple: there’s a constant trade-off between the messages and the necessary detail. We have to keep trying to strike the right balance; we haven’t found the solution yet.
We often find at the end of a long brainstorm that many, sometimes most, of the words we want for products are already registered as trademarks, sometimes decades ago. I’m always amazed at how many are gone. Our open and flexible approach to product copy means we can have lots of choices in product names. Checking for availability is a long and expensive part of the process, and we have an in-house legal team who specialize in this for us.
It is easier to get the copy right on every touch point if writers are in-house. It is such a difficult job if you are not based in the business, if you don’t understand the categories and context for each one.
The Result:
customers know what we offer them, and they love it
We make sure we’re never boring, and we’re always experimenting and reinventing how we talk about our products and their benefits. We’re always looking for fresh approaches and new ideas. For example, we learned shopping bags were being banned in San Francisco; we created a promotion so customers receive a free reusable shopping bag if they spend $20 with us. The funky bag has “plastic bag rehab” written in big hippy lettering – they’ve been a hit.
We make statements explaining who we are and what we stand for. They range from “we think perfect is boring, and wierdliness is next to godliness” to “we also believe in making products safe for every surface, especially earth’s.” We make our attitude felt on the widest possible scale and are not afraid of thinking big. We’ve recently launched a “Detox Seattle” campaign, and even published a book about our attitude and thinking – it’s called Squeaky Green.