Kleenex customers kept writing in that they blew their nose with it, not their face

问题

A product launched for one defined use had customers using it a different way — correct them, or follow their lead

背景

换别人会怎么做

Continue marketing Kleenex specifically for cold-cream removal as originally designed, treating customer reports of using it to blow their noses as an interesting but secondary anecdote, and invest advertising spend in reinforcing the product's intended use rather than risk diluting a clearly defined brand positioning.

他们看到了什么

Kleenex was built and marketed to remove cold cream. Customers wrote in insisting they blew their noses with it instead. Kimberly-Clark tested both pitches and let the invented use replace the one it designed for.

那一手

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. Rather than continuing to market the product for the use it was designed for, Kimberly-Clark repositioned Kleenex's advertising entirely around the disposable-handkerchief use case customers themselves had discovered and were actively requesting, adopting the tagline framing built around throwing the tissue away after blowing one's nose. The repositioning is credited with roughly doubling Kleenex sales, and the disposable-tissue positioning it established carried the brand from a niche cosmetic accessory into a household staple through the 1930s and 1940s. The episode has since become a frequently cited case in marketing and product strategy writing, including the Foundation for Economic Education's analysis of unpredictable entrepreneurial outcomes, as an early and clear example of a company choosing to let observed customer behavior override the product's original designed purpose rather than treating that behavior as a deviation to correct.

为什么管用

The repositioning worked because Kimberly-Clark treated the volume and persistence of unsolicited customer letters as genuine signal rather than dismissing it, and then tested the hypothesis empirically through direct comparative advertising rather than switching positioning on anecdote alone. This let a much larger, previously unaddressed need, an affordable, disposable way to manage a common cold, replace a narrower cosmetic use case the original product had been designed and marketed around, converting what looked like product misuse into the discovery of the real market.

值了多少

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.

什么时候会失灵

This approach requires genuinely listening to unsolicited customer feedback systematically enough to notice a meaningful pattern rather than treating individual reports as noise, a discipline not every company maintains, and requires being willing to test and potentially abandon the product's original designed positioning even when it was arrived at deliberately. It also assumes the customer-discovered use case represents a durable, substantial market rather than a passing quirk; testing the pitch directly against the original, as Kimberly-Clark did, is what distinguishes a genuine repositioning opportunity from an anecdote worth ignoring.

后来呢

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.

资料来源

1. [1]HistoryKleenex, 2023kleenex.com
2. [2]From Kleenex to Zippers: The Unpredictable Results of EntrepreneursFoundation for Economic Education, 2019fee.org

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