PEAKathon 2024 is a competition around the field of marketing strategy aimed at boosting the sales of one of Procter & Gamble’s (P&G) products, Herbal Essence. Herbal Essence is one of P&G’s shampoo products made from natural ingredients that promote sustainability.

The competition was first held locally in Indonesia. The local round was divided into two stages. The first was a Metaverse Quest competition with the challenge of answering multiple-choice and short-answer questions based on a case study involving the Herbal Essence product. After this stage, five teams with the best performance were selected to advance to the next round.

These five finalist teams proceeded to join a regional welcome session, which included detailed discussions on the competition case and strategies revolving the final round. They also attended training and mentoring sessions with executives from P&G Indonesia.

Team SGin1344, consisting of Benedicta Evangelia (Industrial Engineering), along with Alysia Makmur and Labora Lestaria Purba (Engineering Management), proposed a marketing strategy innovation titled SwitcHERoutine. This innovation was built upon the issue surrounding sustainable product usage. While many consumers express a desire to use sustainable products, they often do not actually purchase those products. SwitcHERoutine was created to bridge this gap between intention and action regarding the use of sustainable products. “We used several approaches to bring attention to the impact of pollution on hair,” explained Bora.

In addition to this, the team also conducted a market analysis as part of their marketing strategy. “We performed customer segmentation, especially targeting urban working women, as they are more frequently exposed to pollution and are more likely to be able to afford eco-friendly shampoos,” said Alysia.

Team SGin1344 successfully brought forward a number of programs to raise public awareness regarding the importance of using natural-based shampoo products for hair affected by pollution.

The SwitcHERoutine strategy consists of four structured phases. The first phase is designed to change old habits and shift toward adopting sustainable products. In the second phase, team SGin1334 planned out the use of emotional appeal as a strategy to drive action for consumers to use Herbal Essence products. The third phase focuses on creating instructions to be involved in the desired habit and fostering a stronger personal connection with the product. The final phase aims to promote the continuation of communicating about sustainable behavior in a way that increases brand relevance.

Team SGin1344’s experience in the 2024 PEAKathon was quite insightful. During the first stage of the local round, the team did not encounter a lot of obstacles with the Metaverse Quest, as it is related to topics from their respective majors. However, the second stage proved to be more demanding for the team, as they spent a significant amount of time refining their ideas. “We struggled a bit to develop an idea that fits both the target market as well as the one-pager rule presented by the competition,” Alysia noted. Fortunately, they were accompanied by a mentor throughout developing the one-pager. “The mentoring session really helped, as we were able to gain new points of view,” added Bene.

Reporter: Raja Parmonang Manurung (Mining Engineering, class 2021)

Translator: Muhammad Faiz Satrio Pradiansyah (Microbiology, class of 2022)