ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, March 13, 1996 TAG: 9603130078
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: ITHACA, N.Y.
SOURCE: TED ANTHONY ASSOCIATED PRESS
In boxes, bags, jars and cans, they seem like orphans - an aisle of lost souls from purgatory's supermarket, abandoned by their corporate parents. Robert McMath gives them all a home.
He offers haven to Richard Simmons' Dijon Vinaigrette Salad Spray, microwave sundaes, parsnip chips and aerosol mustard. He takes in garlic cake in a jar, Farrah Shampoo, Miller Clear Beer, Maxwell House Coffee Concentrate and Gerber for adults - pureed sweet-and-sour pork and chicken Madeira.
McMath is curator of an unusual museum: a supermarket-like warehouse brimming with products that tell the story of American retail development, an intricate kingdom where just 4 percent of new items succeed.
Many of his 60,000 products, pulled from shelves since the 1960s, are household names. The misfits - some has-beens, some never-would-bes - become in McMath's hands the Hester Prynnes of productdom, examples of what not to do.
For this insight, corporations and developers pay hundreds of dollars an hour to visit the New Products Showcase and Learning Center and learn from the famous and the fizzled.
``There are so many ideas out there. This is American ingenuity at work,'' said McMath, 65, a resourceful Scot who parlayed an avocation as a product reviewer into his consultant's role as industry historian.
Such companies as Procter & Gamble, Kimberly-Clark, Nabisco and General Foods have enlisted McMath for an intensive process that starts with brainstorming and often ends with clients ``shopping the showcase'' for products that match their ideas.
More often than not, he tells them why their concepts won't work. Then he shows them how to focus on the ones that do.
``I don't want to call the consumer dumb, but no manufacturer can guarantee he knows what the consumer is going to do,'' McMath said. ``I advise them to make products as clear and as simple as possible.''
Otherwise, bad things happen. Several years ago, Planters marketed peanuts in a vacuum-packed ``brick'' that resembled a coffee package. They called it Planters Fresh Roast.
Trouble was, the coffee connection it evoked got in the way.
``Planters got calls from supermarket managers all over the country complaining that customers were putting peanuts in their coffee grinders,'' McMath said.
McMath's showcase represents $4 billion in product investment. He has dozens of lessons for an industry that, by its own admission, has a very short memory.
``Companies need to have codified systems to document failures, but the vast majority don't. If you're a newcomer, you're unlikely to know about previous failures,'' said Edward Ogiba, president of Group EFO, a Weston, Conn., marketing agency that develops packaged goods for such companies as Kraft, Campbell's, Quaker State and 3M.
Clients learn that Heinz Salsa Ketchup, a tasty concoction, faltered because ketchup and salsa usually sit in different supermarket aisles and shoppers didn't know whether to dip nachos in it or slather it onto a hamburger.
They learn that brand extension - attaching a trusted name to a new product - is the chief method of introducing new items these days. Witness Ritz: Twenty-one varieties of its crackers sit on McMath's shelves, including tiny ``Ritz Bits'' and Ritzes stuffed with peanut butter or covered with chocolate.
That goes, too, for V8 Sauce, Vaseline aftershave, Arm & Hammer Deodorant (tried twice), even Seven-Up lip balm and Jordache Love Musk.
``The cost of a new product and advertising it is so high that you have to go with what you know works,'' McMath said.
The showcase's visual element imparts an immediate sense of what past ideas wrought. McMath and his assistant, Ed Rogers, help clients deconstruct failed products and separate what worked from what didn't.
That enables companies to, say, combine the appearance of one package, the label of another and the slogan of a third to make their new product. The results are sometimes surprising.
``One coffee company found their solution in a laundry detergent package,'' says McMath's wife, Jean, the center's secretary-treasurer.
Winners outnumber losers in McMath's museum only because the industry defines success not by whether a product performs well, but whether it performs to expectations.
Because the worst of the worst illustrates so vividly, McMath reserves one shelf as a hall of shame for particularly egregious offenders.
Consider the Richard Simmons salad spray, a healthful idea, quite possibly enticing. Then would-be salad dressers spot the frizzy-haired, tank-topped exercise impresario's moon-faced mug.
``If I weren't a collector of products and my wife had brought me the Richard Simmons spray, I would have dropped it in the nearest wastebasket,'' McMath said. ``It's a personality product, and too many people are not happy with that particular personality.''
Other fiascoes flop more subtly, many as prisoners of their eras.
Faberge introduced Farrah Shampoo just after the abundantly tressed actress left ``Charlie's Angels,'' so her popularity already had peaked. Same problem with Short & Sassy, a conditioner for women with Dorothy Hamill haircuts: By the time it reached shelves, the do it did just didn't do anymore.
Such failures illustrate the rough outback that the supermarket has become.
Small companies' inventions are bought and mass-marketed by large corporations. Products introduced last year had to compete with 21,000 others. And stores now charge companies to put products on shelves.
``Supermarkets have the control, and it's harder to get a product out there than it ever has been,'' McMath says.
McMath's clients keep coming back, but few like to talk about it. Understandably so: Many don't want to admit they need his help, and almost all have products sitting on his shelves.
The ones that do talk praise his collection and his insight.
``As the saying goes, you're never a total failure - you can always serve as a bad example. And his bad examples are great examples,'' said Mickey Gorman, president of the Paper Box Association, a trade group.Several of its 250 members have visited McMath.
McMath sees himself as espousing prevention, not cure.
``It's a marketing truism,'' McMath said. ``You sell the sizzle, not the steak. It's hard to overcome a failure. So I'm in the business of stopping them from happening in the first place.''
LENGTH: Long : 124 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. McMath has banished Richard Simmons' salad spray to aby CNBmarketing hall of shame. Other products, such as Farrah Fawcett's
shampoo, were simply prisoners of their eras. 2. Robert McMath,
director of the New Product Showcase & Learning Center, sits amid
more than 60,000 once-new products while holding some failed
attempts. color.