the blog

josh handy our senior industrial designer at method blogs for the popular package design website called “the dieline”. josh looks like moby and writes like david foster wallace. read on to better understand dishsoap: branding at its most weird by josh handy.

"the old dish

over the years, consumers have been trained by ubiquitous advertising to believe that cleaning is a chore; a boring dirty business that needs to be completed as quickly as possible. product development efforts in the dish soap category have largely eschewed the actual task and have instead focused on adding “benefits” like softening your hands, saving baby animals, or reversing the aging process. brand strategies seem to involve everything but the proverbial kitchen sink. by assuming that people would rather be doing anything but the dishes, marketers have transformed the category into a cluster of contextually irrelevant “meta-claims”. as such, the products in the category have languished. this is branding at its most weird and self-involved. many dish soap brands seem to have lost faith in their core proposition – to clean dishes. it is these types of dull categories that are ripe for re-examination and re-staging.

the new dish

at method, we think this category has gotten off-track and in our attempt to get this product right, we are launching our fourth foray into the dish soap category. dish soap is a pillar of the company, but we have never been satisfied with our ability to balance the needs of our business, customers and consumers.

many packaging designers will remember our iconic bottom dispensing “bowling pin” dish soap designed by Karim Rashid in 2001. the high cost and quirky nature of the design pushed us into a much more conventional execution several years later. this one we nicknamed the “butler” and it played very close to the category. this ultimately was the reason for its downfall. ‘not special enough!” was the protest from retailers and consumers alike. the decision was made to redesign again in an attempt to hit a sweet spot of price, form and function in the category. our next dish soap had to be iconic and “counter-worthy”, yet conform to the category norms in terms of format. the “leaf” bottle was the result.  while it looked beautiful, it quickly was likened to a “slippery fish” by people who picked up the bottle with wet hands. this simple miss allowed us to the see how blind we had become to the real challenge in the category: to serve the dish washer in search of a universally superior experience.  

the realization that people do their dishes in different ways is a key consumer insight that has been downplayed by the category and we largely overlooked. forgetting what we “knew” about doing dishes, we went back to basics. through direct observation, we discovered that there were three main modes of dishwashing: the “fill up the sink with soapy water” mode; the “dose the soap directly on the sponge” mode; and the “pour the soap directly on the dishes” mode. none of the products on the market served all three approaches and that’s the insight we used to inspire our latest design, the “dish pump”.  by simply putting the dish washing experience at the center of the proposition, and designing the soap and the package to actually help in the task, we have a product that does a great job of actually helping the dish washer. ionly wish it hadn’t taken four tries to get there!”
 

ever wonder what the bathrooms of the method co-founders look like? what about our fabulous eco –lifestyle expert, danny seo? well, we want to show you in our weekly “pretty privy” post!

check out our final pretty privy submitted by lisa, another person against dirty! lisa recently re-designed her bathroom with the help of her architect brother-in-law and we think it looks great! thanks lisa for sharing your modern loo with us!

method- favorite method bathroom product and why?
lisa - omop.  my floors are never cleaner than after the omop's microfiber pad has scrubbed them silly.  and i love the squirt & mop cleaner b/c it works great and i never get tired of the smell.

method- bathroom cleaning tip your mama taught you?
lisa – clean it like you mean it.

method- electric or manual toothbrush?
lisa- manual!  if you want it done right, do it yourself.

method- bath or shower?
lisa –bath.  i don't like to wallow.

method- be honest, do you take calls in the bathroom?
lisa-  no. i don't like to take calls, period.

ever wonder what the bathrooms of the method co-founders look like? what about our fabulous eco –lifestyle expert, danny seo? well, we want to show you in our weekly “pretty privy” post!

meet lisa, our selected ‘person against dirty’ who submitted her bathroom for our pretty privy profiles. lisa recently remodeled her bathroom (all by herself) with a theme in mind – old world meets modern day! she wanted to honor the porcelain pieces that her grandmother had painted--that's the old fashioned part--but also add a modern "green" twist.

her homage to upcycling is the wallpaper, which consists of tea-stained, glazed pages from old encyclopedias, a new york city travel guide, two almanacs (one from the year she was married, the other from the year she bought the house), a portuguese soccer book and a movie listings pages.

to add that modern feel, she hung a trapeze mirror, stylish shelves and awesome lighting fixtures complete with CFL lightbulbs. her cleaning products (method, of course) are discreetly tucked into a trunk that once held TV promotional materials for a syndicated show. lisa's a 2010 gal with a 1950’s soul. read up on how she cares for her loo:

method: favorite method bathroom product and why?

lisa: i like lil' bowl blu. the directional spout makes it easier to clean under the rim than spray cleaners, and i love the cute and curvy bottle. i'll admit i'm a sucker for clever package design!

method: bathroom cleaning tip your mama taught you?

lisa: keep a small stash of cleaning supplies in each bathroom of your house if you have more than one. that way you can clean up little messes when you see them and before they become big, nasty, hard to clean messes.

method: electric or manual toothbrush?

lisa: manual all the way. when it’s time to replace a toothbrush, i run the old spent one though the dishwasher, mark the handle so i know it’s an old toothbrush and put it under the bathroom or kitchen sink with the cleaning supplies. old toothbrushes are great cleaning tough to reach places like grout or around the faucet. they’re also good for stain removal in the laundry room.

method: bath or shower?

lisa: shower- for time issues.

method: be honest, do you take calls in the bathroom?

lisa: no way! what if they had a video phone? yikes!

if you have a stylish powder room - or just a WC you’re particularly proud of - we would love to see it! submit your pic* to info@methodhome.com if you're selected, we’ll email you a quick questionnaire to fill out.
 
*remember these “picture privy” tips: we will need a high res photo: turn on the lights, open the windows, avoid a flash, and have fun!