TIDE's Consumer Media Insights

Over many years, Tide, a leading brand in the homecare category, has established itself as a
trusted product found in most Vietnamese's households (Toplist 2020). Constant networking
with current, potential customers and partners through media channels have created the
opportunities for long-term business relationships and grown powerful customer
connections. Therefore, brands today require a thorough understanding of its media insights
and how to get benefits from every platform to efficiently deliver the message to target
audiences. This report will look at the position of Tide in the market as a brand, its target
audience and their consumer journey; then, evaluation will be given to examine the
effectiveness of each channel the brand has used.

1. Brand Background

Tide is an American laundry detergent brand owned by Procter & Gamble, the biggest
homecare brand in the world with a revenue of $17.7 billion in the global market (Lucas 2020).
Entering the Vietnam market in 1996, Tide has become a daily choice for most Vietnamese
households nowadays (Thang Nguyen 2020).

Figure 1. Detergent section in Bach Hoa Xanh, by Nguyen 2020.

Tide promises to provide products and services of superior quality and value that improve the
lives of the consumers, now and for generations to come. With understanding and innovation,
Tide continually helps to deliver the cleanest clothes with the slogans ‘More than clean’ and
‘Ground-breaking white’ (Tide n.d.).

Strengths Weaknesses
 - Tide has built a loyal customer base over
the years.
- Tide is owned by P&G, a
multi-international company.
- High-performed function, especially for
whitening and fragrance.
- Economical price.
- The product doesn't have options for
different washer types.
- Current packaging is monotone and not
eye-catching.
- Tide uses very poor promotional
activities (Perreira 2018).

Opportunities Threats

- Big untapped semi-urban market.
- Changing lifestyle: quality over quantity.
- Tide is a green and sustainable
company.
- Tide faces aggressive price war (Vu Anh
2020).
- Big promotion events from competitors.
- Counterfeit goods are widespread in the
market (Van Dam 2017).
- Online communication hasn't been
established.
- High risk of brand switching.

Overall, Tide is a consistent brand in the market with a healthy image and strong trust among
Vietnamese consumers. However, with few advertising activities and communication, the
brand hasn’t discovered all of its potential yet.

Brand Positioning

Figure 2. Middle range detergent positioning map, by Nguyen 2020.

Currently, P&G's Tide is placing 2nd in the ranking with 33% of people said that they used this
product at least once before according to Q&Me report (2015a).
 Figure 3. Vietnamese detergent market, reproduced from Q&Me 2015b.

Tide can be categorized as the most powerful in action among middle-priced detergents. It is
known to deal with tough stains and whitening features while still maintaining the softness of
clothes. These features make Tide the product that owns all the needed quality while
sustaining an economical price.

However, compared to other affordable detergent brands, Tide is leaning towards the more
expensive side.

Competing Brands

A direct competitor of Tide in the same sector is Surf, a product of Unilever. Carrying the
mission to prioritize consumer's needs first, this detergent offers astonishing cleaning power
with a soothing fragrance. In recent years, Surf has efficiently reinforced brand recognition
and was well-invested in advertising campaigns with strong network distribution and product
innovations (Payne & McDonald 2012).

Since 2012, some domestic products have entered the game, which reforms the homecare
landscape into a more active market (Tam An 2019). Aba is the front-runner from local
detergent brands. Aba users experience with the brand is positive as they highly appreciate
the product's stain removal and deep-clean ability. ABA began to appear in TV ads and more
media channels, helping the brand to become the third-largest shareholder after top brands
(Thanh Lich 2017).

2. Target Audience

Demographics

Tide targets both genders who are 25 to 45 years old and live with their families. They are
middle-class to upper middle-class income workers, working as self-employed workers or
skilled workers (Winer & Dhar 2010).
Geographics

Figure 4. Detergent Usage by area, Q&Me 2015c.

Figure 5. Target audience distribution, Facebook Audience Insights 2020.

Targeted groups mostly live in semi-rural areas, particularly in Northern and Southern
Vietnam. This group lives in areas with the highest Tide product distribution; they concern
about family care topics according to Facebook Insights (2020).

Psychographics

The targeted group are caring, independent people and value family time. They enjoy cooking,
cleaning and shopping. They believe clean and white clothes can make family members
happier and more bonded.

If the target group likes the product, they tend to endure the desire to continue using it so
maintaining communication with this group is pivotal (Fatima 2017).

Behavioural

- Usage behavior:
Cheaper price and promotions can be considered good deals, however, target audiences care
more about the performance of the product and the reputation the brand carries. They
usually wash clothes at least 2 times per week and most of them wash clothes with washing
machines for convenience.

- Shopping behavior:

The target group are regular users of the brand and quality conscious consumers. They
usually repurchase their detergent in 1 to 2 months (W&S Vietnam Market Research 2013).
Supermarkets are the common purchasing channel of target audiences for supplying
homecare products, however, due to Covid-19, the demand for shopping from e-commerce
platforms rises significantly (Nyrop et. al 2020).

- Media behavior:

Television plays important roles in the purchasing choices of this age group with an average of
4 hours a day while doing home chores; while smartphone usage can take up to 2.5 hours per
day (Meng 2020). They mostly use the Internet to watch videos or scrolling through social
media platforms for news and updates about products or services.

- Insight:

Tide targets this group because they are in charge of homecare shopping and doing laundry.
As this group is quality-conscious consumers, their decision making cannot be driven by
promotions. The demand of the semi-urban market rises relatively stronger after the
pandemic will also result in a prominent opportunity for Tide to penetrate this target
audience.

For the media, Vietnamese adult consumers' adopt new technology very fast, creating a
prominent opportunity for using digital communication channels to promote the brand. We
Are Social (2020) stated that 79% of Vietnamese users can be reached with advertisements on
Facebook, with a roughly equal distribution of male and female.
3. Consumer Journey

Figure 6. Consumer Journey, by Nguyen 2020.

Most Tide's target audiences are regular users, which means they are in the stage of
consideration and conversion. They can clearly define their problem and committed to find
the right product by researching and narrowing down options (KPMG 2017).

They depend a lot on Word-of-mouth as Vietnamese consumers believe it holds a timeless

value in the form of trust and credibility (Meng 2020). Another common touchpoint is social
media, especially Youtube, Facebook, Zalo and Instagram with an active social media
penetration rate of 64% (Statista 2020).
4. Media Channel Analysis

Figure 7. Media Channels of Tide, by Nguyen 2020.

Paid Media

● ‘Biet doi sieu toc’ online event game on webtretho and Facebook
● PR Articles on kenh14.vn, 24h.com.vn,...
● Branded Content: a TV series about homecare and laundry stories
● Influencers/KOLs featuring Tran Thanh, Truong Giang.
● Print Ads, Out-of-home, Billboards.
● TVC

Tide's paid media is strongly established with unique and innovative communication
campaigns. The brand has organized many events with interactive activities with engaging
content to communicate with potential customers and receive feedback. This can contribute
to the first level in the consumer journey and raise brand awareness among first-time users
as well as maintain good relationships with loyal users (Tanrikulu 2015).Tide also used the
KOL endorsement of Tran Thanh, a talented MC with a positive image. He became the most
fitted ambassador for Tide, bringing back lots of successful campaigns (Thao Nguyen 2017).

Although the guarantees of paid promotion are increasingly more established, there are still
uncertain factors. It can also become very costly and needs consistent planning and
scheduling (Xie, Neill & Schauster 2018).

Owned Media

● Tide Vietnam Facebook page.

● Tide’s landing page P&G website.

Tide Vietnam fanpage has about 55,500 followers, however, the engagement rate is low and
the content hasn't been updated since 2015. On Tide's landing page, there is little information
about Tide and the brand value.

Figure 8. Tide Facebook Performance, FanpageKarma 2020.

Earned Media

● Word-of-mouth recommendations.
● Blogs/News Articles/Review Articles.

Word-of-mouth contributes greatly to why Tide is still trusted by many customers throughout
years in the market. Tide also earns lots of articles and blog posts as it is popular among the
public and many users are in consideration of choosing the brand. Moreover, blogging and
reviews can add more content value to the brand, which can translate to attracting new
audiences with strong trust established (Lieback 2020).

Though every media channel is distributed selectively and the audience's reactions come out
mostly positive, the company stopped investing in Paid media and Owned media and rely on
Earned media only. Though Earned media is the easiest way to access customers' trust, Tide
can’t control the message as they don't own the content; and cultivating quality relationships
with customers and media outlets is time-consuming.

5. Discussions and Recommendations

● While Tide target audience is the most active group on social media and adopts
advertisements the easiest, it hasn't paid enough attention for this platform with any
communication campaigns since 2015. Therefore, Tide's reputation may be popular
 among loyal customers, it hasn't reached the first-time buyers yet. The brand should
utilize their inventory of Owned media more to boost the fanpage and update new
information to expand its audience.

● Moreover, the target cares about the product benefit rather than the promotion and
word-of-mouth one of their most reliable sources. Tide can take advantage of the
authenticity of User-Generated content to share the real experience of previous users
on social media to attract the attention of those that are considering buying
detergents.
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