Editorial: The Truth About Turtle Wax

Sajeev Mehta
by Sajeev Mehta

All’s not well with Turtle Wax. To wit: in a recent Piston Slap article, numerous commentators made less-than-flattering remarks about the brand’s products and image, indicating that Turtle Wax is suffering a dramatic loss of brand equity. It’s a big problem at a bad time. Last October, 3M acquired Meguiar’s. Barry Meguiar is a tireless and charismatic promoter who’s deeply in tune with car care gestalt. With the normally staid Triple M’s enormous resources behind him, the Divine Mr. M could put a serious hurt on Tommy the Turtle. It’s time to put the terrapin’s marketing under the microscope.

The crux of Turtle Wax’s problem was apparent the moment I entered the company’s wood-paneled conference room. The company displayed a farrago of Turtle Wax branded products, sporting vastly different color schemes, graphics, containers and brand names. Why wasn’t everything in a “Turtle Wax Green” bottle, with Tommy the Turtle placed front and center?

Potato chips. Your local grocery store carries a huge variety of potato chips: regular, fat-free, low-calorie, ruffled, jalapeño, small bags, big bags, etc. Potato chip makers don’t like this product fragmentation; it’s expensive to create and stock new variations. But retailers want their shelves filled with as much variety as possible. If a potato chip maker doesn’t play the game, another manufacturer grabs their shelf space.

Same deal at AutoZone. They allocate shelf space according to product lines, not sales of individual products. In other words, the classic green bottle may account for 40 percent of Turtle Wax sales, but it doesn’t get 40 percent of Turtle Wax’s shelf space. The challenge: how do you create a huge “family” of car care products that look similar enough to extend the brand without triggering Stendhal Syndrome?

In this Meguiar’s has the edge. All of its products feature a large script of the brand name over a black/maroon background. In contrast, Turtle Wax has reduced Tommy to a polo shirt logo, and slapped him on all manner of color schemes and container types (thanks to the logo, they all include the word “wax”). AND there are completely Tommy-less Turtle Wax products, some of which have nothing to do with traditional Turtle Wax car care (e.g., CD2 Engine Treatment).

Turtle Wax is aware of their packaging problems. Their redesigned Zip Wax bottle shows progress towards a more unified front, but there’s no question that their band extensions are cannibals out of control. The Turtle Wax website has a prominent “Help Me Choose” function where you can select from three products that all do roughly the same thing—without being able to choose multiple preferences.

Turtle Wax’s ICE brand points to an even uglier truth: success doesn’t always breed success.

Thanks in part to a distribution deal with Wal-Mart, ICE is America’s number one car care product. But the product’s association with the massest of mass market retailers alienates a wealthier, more automotively diverse demographic of car enthusiasts. Which creates a perception gap large enough for the Zainos (via word-of-mouth), Mothers (with their über-exclusive Shine Award) and Barry Meguiars (Host of Car Crazy) of the world to cut into their business.

ICE’s mass market positioning—offering a product without prominent Turtle Wax branding—makes it vulnerable to attacks from below (cheap, no-name knock-offs) and above (premium products reaching down for sales). Turtle Wax reps said the recession is adding brand insensitive customers looking to shine their old ride. It’s not clear how co/re/de-branding a Turtle Wax product could be considered the best way to create future loyalty.

For those who believe branding is bullshit and choose products for their attributes, consider this: after relaying TTAC commentator kurtamaxxguy’s query about the polymer quality of ICE versus its competitors, Turtle Wax indirectly admitted the differences are like consumer perception for Coke and Pepsi. And the (claimed) lukewarm reception to Proctor and Gamble’s excellent “Mr. Clean” system proves that better living through better chemistry isn’t The Truth About Turtle Wax.

Does any of this sound familiar? A company that adds sub-brands to expand its market share, and then loses market share to more focused competitors? The parallels with GM run even deeper.

Turtle Wax is big in China. Channeling their inner Buick, Turtle Wax does well at Chinese Sam’s Club outlets, selling the same ICE kit that you’ll find in the US for roughly five times more coin (about $100). Each store averages around 100 units annually. Meanwhile, Turtle Wax doesn’t sell their full product range in the PRC; the Chinese ICE brand (not Turtle Wax) has no fraternal or external competitors. For now.

Like GM, Turtle Wax’s future depends on recognizing and highlighting their core values and applying them across a more limited product spectrum, in a coherent, effective and instantly recognizable way.

[Turtle Wax paid for Sajeev’s airfare, transfers, hotel, meals and accommodation. They have also provided sample products for review at no charge.]

Sajeev Mehta
Sajeev Mehta

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  • Jkim23 Jkim23 on May 18, 2009

    Just my two cents: I believe that waxing and polishing maintains the integrity and quality of the original paint surface. I have friends who don't polish/wax and their cars look much more aged with swirling and fading than my friends who do polish and wax.

  • IngSoc274 IngSoc274 on Jun 07, 2017

    Not sure if anybody is reading this since so much time has lapsed. I've often wondered if car waxing helps or if its just a marketing gimmick. Laugh if you will, I use car wax on the toilet: it keeps them clean (absence of stains) much longer, and nothing lasts longer on the toilet than Nu Finish. (For the record I use car sealants on sale and have no brand loyalty.) I also use them on our cars, but have a terrible problem with dust and pollen. (Dust/ pollen magnet).

  • Wolfwagen Is it me or have auto shows just turned to meh? To me, there isn't much excitement anymore. it's like we have hit a second malaise era. Every new vehicle is some cookie-cutter CUV. No cutting-edge designs. No talk of any great powertrains, or technological achievements. It's sort of expected with the push to EVs but there is no news on that front either. No new battery tech, no new charging tech. Nothing.
  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
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