Marketing Mnemonics

Infant Dragon

The Background:

Fail Safe Fire Safety Systems Incorporated started as research and development company working on developing a line of fire protection chemicals that were nontoxic and biodegradable. The company had a business plan that showed a compendium of possible products and markets. However, the company had no sales and no products that were ready to market. Their initial attempts to package a final product were ineffective and without marketing direction.

The company's founders had spent a large amount of time and capital developing the chemicals and searching for applications. The chemicals were basically fire protectants, suppressants, and extinguishing agents. They had several patents and a unique concept for a kitchen fire extinguisher. Their kitchen fire extinguisher had the advantage of being small, light weight, and less expensive than other products on the market.

The Positioning:

We first suggested changing the name and logo of the company as we felt it was too long. They had no usable logo that we could incorporate into product labels. The company did not want to make any name changes based on the marketing inputs as they felt that they had already invested too much in their existing name. So, we were forced to de-emphasize the lengthy name. We were able to do this graphically by emphasizing the words Fail Safe and making the visual square rather than one long line of type. Because the company was a research and development company and no marketing plans, we decided to not position the company at this time, but instead position the individual products as they became available. We felt that we could incorporate a tag line at a later date when the product directions were more defined.

The company wanted to base their product line around the phrase "Don't let it burn... If it does burn keep it small... If you keep it small put it out." We believed that to accomplish this each individual product had to pick up an element of that phrase.

We developed the first product theme... Keep Small Fire Problems Small.

We then developed the second product theme... Stop a Fire Before it is a Fire.

With the above phrases, we were able to tie the individual products to the company's philosophy.

The Mnemonic Image:

We knew the image had to be high impact. It had to tie into the concept of small fires of which if left untamed could result in large uncontrollable fires. Also, we had a very limited budget which required some ingenuity with stock photos. We chose a small lizard. We were able to find a stock photos and modify them. The concept was to develop the image of a baby fire breathing dragon... the infant dragon.

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Comments from Mark Goff:

In Fail Safe's case case, we had to develop an image that followed the company's philosophy. That image also had to be something that we could build on. The concept of an infant dragon met those requirements. It was small. It related to fires. And, if left untamed would result in a full grown fire breathing dragon.

We developed two separate full page sell sheets. These sell sheets could also be used for a full page ad and the image could be used or the cover of a folder.