Brand Advocates: Turning Enthusiastic Customers into a Powerful Marketing Force

Chapter 7

Advocacy Sells Soap (and Other Consumer Products)

Eric Ryan says selling household cleaning products is like running a political campaign.

“You've gotta be really clear on not only what you're for but what you're against,” says Ryan, co-founder of Method, an eco-friendly cleaning products company that has revolutionized the $2 trillion consumer packaged goods industry and turned soap into a cause.

On the homepage of its Facebook profile, Method makes it clear what it's for.

What's Method against? Those big plastic laundry jugs, for one thing. “They're really bad. They use too much plastic and they force people to use too much product,” Ryan says. Method's alternative: an eight-times concentrated laundry detergent in an eco-friendly container, or as Method calls it, a “lean, mean, stain-fighting machine.” See Figure 7.1.

Figure 7.1 Method's Eco-Friendly Laundry Detergent

Source: Courtesy of Method.

This clarity and passion for the environment has helped Method attract millions of fanatical Advocates and become one of the fastest-growing private companies in the United States.

Dirtiest Apartment in San Francisco

Method was founded in 2000 by Eric and childhood pal Adam Lowry (Figure 7.2). Ryan and Lowry grew up in suburban Detroit, where they raced sailboats together and went to the same high school. Years later, when Ryan and Lowry were sharing an apartment in San Francisco—which ...