Kleenex let customers redefine its product

Kimberly-Clark launched Kleenex Kerchiefs nationally in September 1924, marketing the disposable paper tissue specifically as a sanitary alternative to cloth for removing cold cream from the face, a use case the product's entire early advertising, packaging and brand positioning was built around.

Beginning almost immediately after launch, Kimberly-Clark began receiving substantial volumes of unsolicited customer mail describing a different use entirely: people were using Kleenex tissues to blow their noses rather than to remove cold cream, a use the company had not designed for or marketed toward. By the end of the 1920s the volume of this feedback was significant enough that Kimberly-Clark treated it as a genuine strategic question rather than dismissing it as an incidental misuse.

In 1930 Kimberly-Clark ran a direct comparative advertising test, placing both the original cold-cream-removal pitch and a new nose-blowing pitch in front of consumers, and found the nose-blowing message outperformed the original cold-cream positioning by roughly two to one.

Tested both pitches and let the invented use replace the designed one, repositioning Kleenex around nose-blowing after it beat cold-cream removal two to one.

Unsolicited customer letters revealed a pattern of nose-blowing use.

Comparative ad test showed the nose-blowing pitch outperformed 2-to-1.

Repositioning around the discovered use tapped a larger, common need.

Willingness to abandon original design intent unlocked a mass market.

When customers persistently use your product differently, test that use against your original positioning; the discovered market may be bigger.

Launched 1924 as a cold-cream remover, Kleenex's 1930 ad test found 'blow your nose' beat the original pitch 2-to-1 — sales doubled. Became a frequently cited early case study in marketing and business strategy writing, including the Foundation for Economic Education's analysis of unpredictable entrepreneurial outcomes, for how tracking and acting on actual customer usage rather than defending the original designed purpose can reveal a substantially larger market than the one a product was built for.