SKILLS
Product Design / 3D Modelling & Rendering / Branding & Marketing / Illustration / Animation
How might we redesign toilet paper to bring comfort and control back into Cottonelle customers' hands during chaotic pandemic times, while reestablishing brand loyalty?
The supermarket shelf is a highly volatile, hyper-competitive dynamic market landscape. Each year, this course asks students to innovate upon existing, mundane, and outdated brands and reconsider them from the top down (brand identity, consumer target, logo, tagline, packaging, etc.)
For our project, we were tasked with reinventing Cottonelle Toilet Paper, inspired by the toilet paper craze during peak Covid times.
We particularly zoomed in on the social crisis. When schools re-opened, Covid cases in children rose from 2% to 10% of all US cases. 51% parents also indicated that they were not comfortable with their children going back to school due to hygiene concerns.
Global studies have shown that aerosol droplets from public toilet plume do in fact put you and your loved ones at risk of COVID-19. Youthful hands touch everything they shouldn’t. In public bathrooms, everyday objects become playgrounds for filth. From the toilet seat to toilet paper, we know the threat of germ sharing is very real.
WHO ARE OUR CONSUMERS?
Customer: Thank Us Later Parents
The Thank Us Later Parents, Jordan and Blair, would be purchasing the TiPi. They’re young parents, in their late-thirties who are fearful of their child’s safety in public spaces, such as bathrooms, especially when they’re not there. They’re also willing to pay a premium for products that bring peace of mind.
User: Extracurricular Wallflower Tween
Thee users of our product are the parents as well as the Extracurricular Wallflower Tween, Morgan. She goes to school, extracurriculars, her friend’s houses, and public spaces where she is exposed to many invisible dangers.
OPPORTUNITY
Currently, when looking at the highest-grossing domestic toilet paper products, Cottonelle is no where near the top. In fact, they are ranked 9th, grossing around $290 million in 2019.
Existing market white spaces also present critical gaps we can roll in to fill. Portable paper products like flushable wipes produce excess waste, compressed camping tablets require water for use, existing “on the go” roles are difficult to rip and have no refills, and finally, none of these products are designed to match our hectic schedules and busy lives.
Cottonelle can —and should — turn these crises into opportunities by providing a portable TP solution to fill white spaces, gain market share, and ultimately restore consumer control.
BRAND ASSETS
We wanted to create a graphic universe that reflected the youthful spirit of Tipi. For the logotype, we wanted to portray the bond between a parent and their child with the different sized i’s, and we stylized the abbreviation of Toilet Paper — TP — with them.
We selected four brand colours to represent our four personality traits. Together, they reflect TiPi’s youthful and fun personality. We also brought back a beloved Cottonelle brand asset — the ripples — and modernized them for TiPi. Finally, the pill shape is present throughout our branding as an auxiliary asset.
BRAND PERSONALITY
These four traits embody Tipi’s “personality” and include both functional (vigilant, resourceful) and emotional (level-headed, empathetic) traits. Together, they help differentiate Tipi from competitors and help to drive consumer loyalty, connect with consumers on an emotional level, and inform design decisions.
DESIGN PROCESS
In our design process: we started out with the question: what is portable toilet paper? We imagined different ways the unit could be carried around, including combining portable TP with existing products such as cell phones and makeup bags. We then explored different container shapes and developed rapid prototypes to test out the ergonomics.
Through our iterative process, we arrived at a simple and clean pill-shaped form that eliminates crevices that could lead to the accumulation of dirt. We then developed Tipi’s tectonics, color, packaging, and created 3D-printed mockups
Introducing Tipi by Cottonelle
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Introducing Tipi by Cottonelle 〰️
TiPi by Cottonelle revolutionizes the entire toilet experience with a sleek, hygienic, on-the-go device so that you have complete control. After all, the cleanest TP is your own TP.
PRODUCT DETAILS
Tipi features an air-tight flip cap, child-safe TP cutter, haptic instructions, and many other design elements for ergonomics and security. Our product packaging makes our novel accessory visible from nearly all angles and features product highlights and use instructions.
Owning the Micro-rolls
We also introduced these two-inch wide refill rolls, which fundamentally disrupt the category norm by enabling Cottonelle to own the micro-roll in a market saturated by mega-rolls. By employing this price pack architecture strategy, Cottonelle will be able to monetize less for more.
We also removed the cardboard core - keeping sustainability in mind and eliminating the pain of that last sheet of TP being stuck to the cardboard core.
Our micro-roll refill packs come in 3 sizes to meet the needs of different households. All refill packaging can collapse down like an accordion to save space as the micro-rolls are used up.
USER JOURNEY
Here is the overview showing how and where consumers will interact with our products. There are four key touchpoints throughout process:
PRICING
TiPi will make money for Cottonelle and its parent company Kimberly-Clark. We estimated the TiPi cost structure based on raw material costs and Kimberly-Clark’s historical financial statement. Tipi will yield $1.6 net profit for every $7 sales per unit of product, which represents a 23% net margin, even higher than Kimberly-Clark’s company average.
FUTURE EXPANSION
For future planning, TiPi could expand in two directions to stay relevant to a broader market even after Covid. For customer expansion, Tipi can expand from the core customers today - the parents and tweens - to anyone who needs to go to public spaces during Covid, and then to anyone who prefers a cleaner TP of their own even after Covid. For use expansion, we will also expand beyond just bathroom use to more occasions.
BRAND ANATOMY
Tipi. Let’s brave a new world together.
IMPACT
Awarded distinction
SKILLS DEVELOPED
Product Design & Development
Branding & Product Strategy
3D Modelling & Rendering
Project Management (team of 8)
INSIGHTS
Think about a brand as if they were a person - what is their personality? How do you want your consumers to emotionally connect with you?
Iterate. Lots. You’ll never get the ergonomics right the first time (or first 20).