March 22, 2010

Need fingernail wash

About to strip off for my shower in a bathroom at someone's home in Goa a few days ago, I noticed:

* Next to the sink, a container of Palmolive Naturals Milk and Olive Handwash.

* On a small shelf next to the shower, a container of Khadi Herbal Sandalwood and Honey Face and Body Wash.

* Next to the previous on the same shelf, a container of Fabindia Shampoo with Seabuckthorn.

I sampled all three. I could discern no difference between the three liquids -- whether in texture, aroma or cleaning efficacy.

Ah, I think. I must have arrived in the nirvana of soap marketers: the consumer who willingly gives up buying one soap in order to buy three separate soaps. And if the same soap marketers tell their manufacturers to produce a Ginger and Snake Oil Foot Wash, or an Aubergine and Horseradish Left Hand Last But One Fingernail Wash, no doubt such consumers will willingly buy those too. Till the point that the bathroom will be so full of soap containers labelled "Wash", that anybody larger than a cricket ball will need to take a shower elsewhere.

Elsewhere in the same bathroom, I found a container of Dove Breakage Therapy Conditioner Repairing Serum.

Marketing at work, of course. Sell a guy a soap that is supposed to do nice things to his hair and call it shampoo. Then persuade him that it also does horrible things to his hair, and sell him a Conditioner to fix the horrible things.

There is an opportunity here, you heard it here first, to produce Breakage Therapy Conditioner Repairing Serums for sundry other body hair parts. Such as Right Nostril Hair.

Mine breaks all the time.

(All of which reminds me of a previous encounter with shampoo).