Description: A cooling knee pillow
Main Pitch: "Improves your body's natural alignment and gives you a more comfortable, cooler sleeping surface"
Main Offer: $14.99 for one with cover
Bonus: 2nd one (just pay P&H)
Marketer: Allstar
Producer: Opfer
Watch the spot
The knee pillow is a classic example of Old Gold turned Siren. It happens sometimes. The market changes, an old item fails to resurrect once or twice, and yet marketers still hold onto the hope that they can figure out how to bring it back.
In this case, the Old Gold item is the Contour Leg & Knee Pillow, which was on the charts from 1999-2002, topping out at No. 1 in 2000. That's a nice shiny piece of gold, so I get it. But here's what has happened since then ...
- Simon Right tried the Ultimate Knee Pillow
- Ontel tried the same commercial under the name Huggy Knee Pillow
- National Express tried the Sobakawa Knee Pillow
- And Contour itself tried with Double Back
What's interesting is that all of those attempts featured 'new and improved' versions of the original concept. I suppose it's possible that the knee-pillow concept can still make a comeback, it's just that no one has found the right angle yet. (Hear the Siren calling?) But I'm not sure cooling is the thing. At least, the idea struck me as strange when I first considered it. Do sleep pain and sweaty thighs go together? Maybe solving the former problem creates the latter problem? I can't really say, but this feels like the old 'segment of a segment' thing again.
S7 Analysis: In S7 language, my issue is with the target. I think focusing the pitch in this way might be slicing the market too thin to support a campaign.
