A great re-brand

Nothing like an excellent re-brand to get my attention. As you may know from my earlier posts, we suffered a family tragedy. It is really hard to function in the normal day-to-day sense as your mind tries to comprehend and process the information, emotions and necessities of moving forward.

In the spirit of moving forward, one of the unavoidable facts of life for a 40/50/60-something woman is that your hair grays. It doesn't matter that I didn't want to pay any focus to my graying roots, but they seemed to take on a life of their own and screamed for a quick home dye-job. So, in an effort at a return to normalcy, I tackled my hair. For those of you with graying tresses, you'll understand what I mean by tackled.

Gray is stubborn. Gray is coarse. Gray would prefer to remain gray. And I would prefer that it beats a hasty retreat. If you have ever home-dyed, then you, like me, will also have tried just about every brand there is on the market. Feria, Preference, Nutrisse, Nice'n'Easy...and on and on. And, if your gray is like mine, within days of torturing your hair, the gray brazenly peeks through, daring you to last three weeks until your next dye job.

I was very curious when Clairol came out with Gray Solutions and promises of 100% gray coverage (and skeptical, of course), but I decided to try it. The product was very good. My coverage was solid. The gray didn't peek through. But the packaging and the experience of the product? Not as good. The packaging looked old. What can I say? I realize I'm covering the gray, but I'm an almost 50-something. I'm not yet my mom's age of 72. But the packaging made me feel old. The pre-treatment worked, but made me look like some sort of a drowned rat after application. Good end result, but not a feel-good experience. It worked, so this became my reluctant brand of choice.

So imagine my surprise when I opened the package to start the process just the other day. I'd noticed the exterior branding had changed a bit -- skewed to a bit younger demographic -- but the entire interior packaging had been reinvented. Instead of boring foil packets, the packaging had changed to a gorgeous new age blue (think paint job on all the new car models now). The pre-treatment gloppy paste had been reformulated to a lighter gel that could be used all over the head rather than just the ends (easier usage) and the conditioner had been lightened up. Oh joy, oh bliss...I WAS the TARGET MARKET. They had rebranded for ME! So now, a great product, intended to cover the gray, had been rejuvenated (literally).

Why all the waxing on hair dye? Because it was a perfect example of taking a great product (like you, the 50 plus jobseeker) and finding a way to re-package, re-tool, chunk, and retrofit your external presentation in a way that the buyer (HR recruiter) would find not only your product solid (your skill set), but how you were packaged (how you'd fit into a younger company culture, for example) and what you brought to the mix.

So my hair may have great coverage, but the re-brand reinvigorated me. Good job, Clairol. Good job.

PS. Incidentally, I have not been solicited by Clairol or paid by them to review their product. But it sure would be nice to get a lifetime supply of the product...my hair will only get grayer.