Hello Australia!
Bali Secrets Natural Deodorant rollin’ out down under.

29 Aug, 2020 | Good News

How to create a bad marketing campaign.

In January 2019 we launched our Bali Secrets Natural Deodorant in Australia. Now we’re launching again.

The first time ’round we sorta, kinda forgot to tell people about it. Rookie mistake. The result was plenty of excess stock, which we gave away to our friends in Australia who now have hundreds of bottles of our natural deodorant sitting in their garages. (And hopefully a bottle or two in their bathrooms).

To tell the truth, at the time we were a little blinded by our success in the US of A. Entrepreneurial logic (or naïveté) dictates that if you’re successful in one market, you will of course be successful in another. Just send in the goods and wait for it.

As of today, we’re still waiting.

Let’s try again. We’re declaring the first launch a pre-launch, and this launch the ‘actual’ launch. This time for real.

The timing is perfect. Launching a product in a new market during a pandemic is clearly an excellent idea. Everyone’s home, feeling angry, scared, bored or all of these at once. If there’s one thing people need right now, it’s a natural deodorant. Nothing says self love like wanting to smell good for yourself at home in your pyjamas.

Flash back to our brainstorming session:

“We need ideas for a marketing campaign. Maybe something humorous?” Martin, one of the co-founders said to get the ball rolling.

“Animals?” Katie suggested. She’s one of the other co-founders and therefore this is by default a good idea.

“Good idea.” Everyone else agreed. Ivor, our Croatian born, Australian raised Master of Optimisation, concurred that Aussies love their four legged friends far beyond the barbecue rituals. And they are also well known for their fabulous sense of humour.

Katie had another idea: “Why don’t we interview different animals and ask about their opinion on Bali Secrets (re)launching their natural deodorant down under?”

Sounds excellent. Let’s do it.

“You really think this is a good idea?

This may or may not have been excerpts of an actual draft:

[… Sidney the Koala sat casually on her Eucalyptus tree as she greeted us with warm big eyes. “Sidney, would you kindly tell us what you appreciate most about our Natural Deodorant?”, we asked and handed her a bottle. She slowly took it, and stared at the bottle. She appeared entranced. “Sidney?” She looked at us, shrugged, then returned to fixating on the bottle. “Sidney?” We were concerned she might fall from the tree. “It’s organic and vegan. And of course cruelty-free”, we added hoping to spark her interest and prevent a Koala-falling-from-the-tree-accident. Sidney’s pupils widened slightly, when she finally yawned. For a while. Quite a while. A long while …]

“You really think this is a good idea?” Giles the other co-founder said, with a worried expression on his face. “I am not sure whether this is funny or just plain bad?”

Fair enough.

“Maybe we should add a couple of photos with some cute looking animals. In 2020 nothing says ‘we’re hip and trendy’ more than a set of hyper-stylised-multi-filter-Instagramable social media posts. That’s how they say it, right?” Rob our tech-savvy Happiness Manager suggested.

Great idea. The next step was to hire a Photoshop artist and hand our sweet animal friends a bottle of natural deodorant.

The first result, a Koala hugging a larger-than-life deodorant bottle, looked – well – interesting. Without a doubt, the Photoshop job was well executed. However, the final result also kinda, sorta hinted a wee bit to what some of us had feared: Maybe the marketing idea wasn’t quite as good in real life as it seemed during our conversation.

“I want to take it all the way.”

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“So were we seriously thinking that shlapping a product image on a couple of stock photos was a good idea?”

Someone said it. Everyone was thinking it.

Well yes. For a moment it seemed like a great idea. And it also brought up several questions:

– Is this actually funny?
– Does this go along with our cruelty-free philosophy?
– Are we overthinking this?
– Should we shelf the whole thing?
– Is anyone going to care?

“I want to take it all the way.” Martin eventually said. “Let’s get a bunch of Aussie animal stock photos and hire more graphic artists and see how far we can take this.”

Silence.

“We should even create a fund raising campaign along side of it. The animals in Australia have suffered horribly during the recent bush fires. We’ll donate one AU$ per sold bottle to one of the wild life rescues.”

Giles’ face formed what could be perceived as a smile. “This is the first good idea I’ve heard during this whole meeting.”

Martin’s pep talk continued: “If we truly are all about celebrating every body in their uniqueness and about smashing the ridiculous beauty standards and norms, then we’ve got to be able to also laugh and celebrate if things don’t go as expected. Does that make sense?”

Plank stares from the team.
No. Not really, mate.

“Never mind. Some people will like it, some won’t and others will think we’re crazy – And that’s fine. I love that weird looking photo with the Wombat too much not to share it with the world.”

Giles took a deep breath. “In all honesty, this campaign is starting to become scarier than life itself.”

Heavy sigh. “Let’s do it.”

And so we crossed the threshold.

Hello
Australia!
(Again.)

With humour and love, we proudly present to you Bali Secrets’ first bad marketing campaign 2020.

You can now find our line of natural deodorants on Amazon in Australia. Cheers!

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P.S. Help us help the animals impacted by the Australian bush fires. We will donate one Aussie Dollar for every deodorant bottle we sell in Australia between now and the end of October 2020 to WIRES Wild Life Rescue. Or click here to make a donation now.

P.P.S. Want to see more of our cute animals?
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“Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it’s unbelievable.”

― Roald Dahl, Matilda