Marketing Strategies for Advertising-Banned Products: A Case Study on Bausch & Lomb Contact Lenses

Contact lenses products has been developing more than 20 years here in Taiwan, from RGP product in the very beginning to monthly, bi-weekly till one day contact lenses. The development of this industry is much faster than fast moving consumer goods (FMCG). Recently, some manufacturers developed so-call specialty lenses, eg. Toric lenses, Multi-Focal lenses….etc. However, due to the local regulation constrain, those products are prohibited to do mass media advertising, so the sales and brand awareness of those products are not in good shape.

The selling activities of contact lenses are limited in traditional optical trade, the business model need a middleman between the products and consumers to facilitate the selling which is different from traditional FMCG products in open shelf environment. Furthermore, the profit contribution of contact lenses to optical trade is much lower than traditional frames and glasses (around 5%), so the sales people (practitioner or fitter) are reluctant to push those products to consumers. This could be kind of invisible barrier to contact lenses manufacturers.

The most efficient vehicle to market FMCG products is to do mass media advertising, that helps quickly build up brand awareness and generate strong consumers “Pull”. As a marketer, it worth to take a study to know how to market a product in this kind of advertising-banned industry.

Experienced in FMCG industry for more than 10 years and have sound understanding in this contact lenses business, the researcher suggests some practical marketing strategies to build up the business. The study could provide some solutions for advertising-banned products; it also could evaluate the effectiveness of some Push & Pull strategies that are often used in FMCG industry. In addition, the study also can be a reference to other advertising-banned category like medical devices or liquor and tobacco.