The Unlikeliest Product

In marketing, the key to growth is anticipating, even creating, demand for new products--and some of them surpass yesterday's wildest fantasies. Four-color, full-page advertisements for one such item have been appearing in Mademoiselle, Harper's Bazaar, Cosmopolitan and other publications. An unclothed, deadpan model looks out from under the slyly provocative headline: "Relax. And Enjoy the Revolution." The product is Cupid's Quiver, a $3.50 package of twelve sachets of liquid douche concentrate that is offered in two floral scents (orange blossom and jasmine), as well as two flavor scents (raspberry and champagne). The ads were created by Marsteller Inc., a relatively sober agency that includes among its accounts IBM, Dannon Yogurt and Fruit of the Loom. Vogue banned any hint of the flavors, and the ad in that magazine showed only the floral scents.

Cupid's Quiver is sold in pastel packaging from cosmetics counters instead of drug shelves. It was introduced nationally in August, and sales in the first two months climbed to $250,000--a total that would please any marketer of a new drug or cosmetic. It has had little trouble moving into better-known stores, including San Francisco's I. Magnin, Washington's Woodward & Lothrop and Brooklyn's Abraham & Straus. Philadelphia's Strawbridge & Clothier declined to advertise the product publicly but included 75,000 brochures for the item in the monthly statements that it mails to customers.

It Began Underground. The product's prospects were further heightened last month when Tawn Limited, a subsidiary of McKesson Laboratories, the giant drug wholesaler, bought the production and distribution rights. Until then, Cupid's Quiver was produced by Joseph Laboratories in Los Angeles, a tiny, one-product firm formed this year by Hylton Socher, a public relations man, and Harvey Meyerhoff, a graphics designer. They had acquired the product from Michael Intrator, a musician, who had developed it. For a time, he sold Cupid's Quiver through ads in the Los Angeles Free Press and other underground newspapers.

To gain a wider market, Socher and Meyerhoff interested Marsteller in handling the advertising account. Vice President Robert Carpenter, who until then had worked on campaigns for such items as laundry products and hand tools, recalls that his immediate reaction to the Cupid's Quiver assignment was "total shock." But, he adds, "once I looked into it more, I began to see it was possible." Marsteller tested the product, the name and the advertising on four panels of women, from conservative matrons to young "sophisticates" (including a movie producer's daughter and a topless dancer). Most of the panelists liked the idea, though some recommended eliminating heavy, sweet flavors, like peach rum. The manufacturer took their advice.

Tawn's immediate strategy is to build the product's image by selling it through as many prestige outlets as possible and then move it heavily into drugstores. The only loser in this unlikely success story is Marsteller. Tawn executives last week switched the $500,000 account to Kane Light Gladney Inc., which is McKesson's ad agency.

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