Gloves and the Cola Wars

Child of the eighties here. I remember the Cola Wars (you know… the ones Billy Joel couldn’t take anymore). I remember the big New Coke debacle of 1985… which even today seems to have differing opinions as to whether it was a blunder or a shrewd PR stunt.

Anyways. A few years back I watched the “Pepsi vs Cola” documentary, and one of the key takeaways was it that while Pepsi focused on being “the choice of a new generation”, Coke focused on the family values aspect, that this is what your parents drank, what your grandparents drank… and what they leaned into heavy when they brought back the original Coke under Coca-Cola Classic.

So, a few years ago I was working on the Strategic Catalogue for Midas Safety. At one point I was urged to just mark the “New” gloves as “New” to make them stand out. However, I thought that was a bit of a lost opportunity there – in all the focus on “New”, you lose out on the value of the “Classics”.

In fact, a few years back I’d started exploring the idea of bundling some older gloves together into what I called “The Workhorse” series, where I used language like the old classic “tried, tested and true”, with the boast of “there’s a reason you see these gloves everywhere… because they keep doing the job!”.

I never actually pushed the “Workhorse” series concept – as a manufacturer to companies all over the world, the concept of “Workhorse” does play in North America and probably the UK, the idea might not survive translation into a lot of other countries. But, the idea never really went away.

As an aside… when I was working at 50 Carleton, I made an animation out of a quiz, with some corresponding answers. And this quiz has stuck with me as a fundamental of advertising:

Where will you see your more profitable business?
1. Past Customers
2. New Customers
3. Existing Customers

The answers were: Old Customers? No – past customers are past customers for a reason – your relationship has broken down and the resources needed to rebuild that relationship may outweigh any return you see on investement. New Customers? No – new customers take a lot of work to “romance”… and this can get expensive. Existing Customers? Yes – these are the folks you already have a relationship with, they know you, they (hopefully) trust you and you know them. Ideally, it’s your existing customers that will be your best option for profit, as you can leverage this relationship for new avenues for mutual gain.

I’ve kept this in mind in the glove-selling business. While there’s always the tease of the “NEW” gloves that you want to be the next big thing, or a new customer… fact is, developing those new products is expensive, they don’t always catch on, new customers tend to be conservative until a track record is established… and so, like in so much else, your bread and butter is going to be the existing relationships you already have, with products you’ve already established.

So, Strategic Catalogue. I actually pushed and sold the idea of utlizing the “Classics” concept beside the “New”. I created a badge system that would appear with every glove.

I actually added that intermediary “Classic Plus” concept, a mix of Silver with Gold, to highlight that some of our older “workhorse” gloves had received refreshes to bring it in line with with today’s standards. They’re still older products, but they’re improved at the same time. I likened it to classic records getting remastered, games getting re-released with updated graphics for new consoles, or George Lucas’ endless tinkering with the Star Wars trilogy in the nineties leading up to Episode 1.

So, while the new products would get the gold, innovation icon:

And older products would get the silver “Classic” icon –

The recently upgraded classics would get the Silver “Classic” with a gold “Plus” added.

It’s a sales philosophy I would carry over into my work posting to the Midas Safety LinkedIn feed. I recently sold management on the idea to post regular images highlighting products in our collection, twice a week. We hadn’t been posting much glove-related for the longest time and the clothing posts, the new employee posts and the random other posts were painting a picture of the company that had little to do with gloves.

So, like just about everything I work on (because although my official title is graphic designer, I also end up being the copywriter, photographer, the conceptualizer and just about anything else that needs to be done bringing these things out to the world) I would wind up writing these posts after finding the focus and direction. Get Product Management to sign off and away we go.

This older glove would actively utilize some of the “classic” and “workhorse” language I’d previously explored. It’s an old glove. One of those you’ll find produced by just about every manufacturer on the planet. There was no way to hide that, so, working with the Product Manager in charge, I decided to lean into it.

On the other hand, this is one of our newer gloves, so the language was all about its sturdy functionality and protection, including very topical pesticide and fentanyl/gastric acid protection, so important in certain markets these days.

Then you have one of our other old standbys… the NFT general purpose glove. I actually made several separate posts out of this one, each one with the language altered subtly to highlight the visual focus of the post and the actual glove being featured. It doesn’t use language like either “new” or “classic”, though where appropriate it does focus on the touchscreen functionality recently added to the glove, which makes it more contemporary.

An NFT glove on a cut resistant liner with a back of hand impact protection would recycle some of the language of the NFT coating but also focus on the differentiating features:

While not all of these entries would utlize the “classic” vs “new” concept, they don’t have to. It’s not actually an overriding necessity. When it works, I give it some focus, when there’s no room for it, I utilize language that featues of the product I’m working with.

Ultimately, “new” isn’t always what sells. In some markets, they’re not looking for new, they’re looking for something already proven that they can trust. Something equivalent to something their competitor is already selling on the market and they want an answer to it.

I’m not sales. I’m a graphic designer who happens to do some conceptual and copywriting work… however, whenever I get the opportunity, I do encourage our salespeople to keep in mind that “new” isn’t always the selling feature… to gauge their customer and their needs, and if they’re not looking for, or swayed by, the newest kids on the block, they may just be interested in hearing about the tried, tested and true workhorses that keep selling… because they keep doing the job.