Adhesives.

We knew we had developed a superior product, but knowing it ourselves was not enough. We had to make our buyers and potential consumers aware of it as well.

Getting a product onto the hardware store shelf is a zero-sum game. Existing well-established brands hold a significant advantage over newcomers. Those existing brands were also significantly bigger than us.

The challenge was enormous, but so were our goals regarding the new product launch:

1. Keep revenue steady in a declining market. 2. Get distribution agreements with the four biggest hardware store chains in Finland. 3. Open discussions about international expansion. 4. Gain a total reach of 1M for the campaign (5x the potential target audience).

TARGET AUDIENCE: BUILDERS The target audience was professional and semi-professional builders. They either work on construction sites or have their own building projects. They are predominantly male, 30-50 years old. Humor and Finnish music resonate well with them.

Outside our core target audience, we wanted to achieve broader reach. Marketing research has proven that campaigns aiming for broader reach and fame perform better. This can also be cost-effective, as narrowing down the target audience too much would bring the unit price of reaching them too high.

To reach this broader audience, we had to be creative, humorous, and bold. We could not bore that audience with technical jargon, and to be honest, that is not the way to the hearts of the professionals either.

STRATEGY: HACK THE NAME As the brand was completely new, could we name the product so that everyone would be familiar with it from day one?

Enter WTF. World's Toughest Fix, the world's first lifestyle adhesive brand.

We registered the term WTF globally but applied new meaning to it (World's Toughest Fix). Through this innovative naming, we had instant brand recognition and liking on a similar level as other well-established brands.

We conducted global research on how WTF and competitors were perceived by the target audience and beyond. The competition evoked mainly neutral emotions but WTF did not leave respondents indifferent. Only 9% thought it was neutral.

The emotions that arose from the concept were funny, powerful, and strong—exactly the ones we wanted to emphasize in our communications.

We also tested where the new brand fell compared to existing established brands and the competition. It was instantly ranked as high as strong brand benchmarks like Coca-Cola and BMW.

This gave us a great platform to create our brand: a brand name that has favorability and likability plus a direct connection to the actual product. WTF became a synonym for the strong brand in the market and guided our activities.

CREATIVE EXECUTION: BEHAVING LIKE A LIFESTYLE, NOT AN ADHESIVE, BRAND Whatever we wanted to do was to demonstrate that toughness, but not in a serious manner. Having a tongue-in-cheek approach is an important part of the brand. This tough, humorous mentality served as our guiding light in every activity we did.

WTF was anchored in popular culture with strong branding that defied category conventions. In advertising, we relied on non-traditional channels that resonated with the target audience and demonstrated the brand name in action. We could not outspend the competition, we had to outsmart them.

Instead of a TV ad, we created a song (maybe the first ever anthem about adhesives) with Finnish party rap duo Pasi & Anssi. We conducted product demonstrations with influencers, bringing the brand’s promise to life in a concrete but unique way (e.g., trying to rip glued parts with tanks).

Product naming in the category tends to be quite technical, but we flipped the naming to highlight the key benefits of the products: Extreme Tack, Ultimate Grab, Offensive Flex, among others.

In addition to the products, we created WTF apparel and even an after-work beer range. None of these activities had not been done in the category before.

RESULTS: EXPLOSIVE We were able to reach and surpass our business, brand, and brand fame targets.

a) BUSINESS: MAKING WTF A CATALYST FOR OUR FUTURE GROWTH Through the WTF product launch, we grew our business by 21% compared to the market. The construction market was declining by 17%, so we were able to swim upstream against our competitors.

Our goal was to keep revenue steady in a declining market, so the result the new brand gave was massive. This was especially notable as our product had a higher price point than competitors.

Because of the strong branding and selection of non-conventional marketing channels, the launch was effective and cost-efficient (ROI 10x). ROI is expected to improve over the years as this includes the brand development investments.

b) BRAND: GETTING HARDWARE STORE BUYERS EXCITED ABOUT THE BRAND’S POTENTIAL WTF was stocked in 6 major hardware stores in Finland (K-Rauta, Onninen, Bauhaus, Starkki, Prisma, and Motonet), which was over our target of four retailers. Our POS placements have been prominent in all of these retailers. Internationally, Bauhaus in Sweden and Lowe’s in the USA started distributing WTF.

The latter was a great success as we were one of the winners from over 7000 entrants in Lowe’s Into the Blue innovation competition. WTF is now stocked in 50 Lowe’s stores in the US.

c) BRAND FAME: GOLD RECORD FOR THE GLUE COMPANY The WTF song with Pasi & Anssi has been streamed and watched over 3.3M times (Spotify & YouTube). It received a gold record, which is probably the first time for an adhesive brand.

All our marketing activities received over 5M reach in Finland, which reached our goal 5x over.

Immediately following the launch, WTF achieved a similar level of brand recognition and likability as many other well-established brands, confirming the earlier research result.

Despite challenging situation in construction industry, WTF attracts interest and will be expanding to new markets in the future.