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Chances are good that you’re well acquainted with Scotch Performance Masking Tape 233+, manufactured by 3M. But like most people, you probably just call it green tape. Once a product attains such a level of instant familiarity that we scarcely need to speak its name, it’s difficult to remember when it didn’t exist.
Green tape was introduced to the Canadian industry in 1997, replacing its beige predecessor, Scotch Performance Masking Tape 233. Functional, yet adorned with a very stylish colour, it’s tempting to regard the success of green tape as the result of slick marketing.
You can picture the scene: executives seated around a boardroom, surrounded by sample colour swatches and product prototypes in every conceivable shade of the spectrum. On the blackboard at the front of the room, the phrase “new tape colour = new tape identity = $$$” has been circled several times.
Rick Berg is the real-life version of one of those imaginary suits. As he tells it, the real breakthrough with green tape was unprecedented communication between manufacturer and end-user. It was, in Rick’s view, feedback from painters in the shops, not sexy packaging, that made the product what it is.
A former salesman, Rick, now Business Manager of 3M’s Automotive Aftermarket Division(AAD), inherited the masking tape program as an AAD marketer in the mid-1990s, just as green tape underwent its first round of testing.
Recalling the early reaction of some of the more senior sales team members, Rick says, “We had guys who’d been selling tape to shops for 20 years looking at it and saying, ‘Ah, well, it looks and feels like it’s the same stuff to me. You’ve just put a snazzy new colour on it.’ We spent a lot of time proving to them that the difference was the product itself, so that they could prove it to the painters.”
And while green tape is officially celebrating its tenth birthday this year, its life actually began as a concept in 1995. The old beige 233 tape was, at the time, 3M’s highest-performing number-one-selling automotive masking tape. “We typically try to upgrade our products about every five years to keep up with the changing conditions at the shop,” Rick says. “It was clear that after 40 years, 233 tape had run its course from a performance standpoint. But if there’s one thing that painters get passionate about, it’s the performance of their masking tape. We knew we were going to encounter fierce loyalty to the old and wariness toward the new.”
The current advent of waterborne refinishing regulations stands to be a boon for the fortunes of 233+ green tape, as it performs extremely well against the unique rigours of water-based paints. Originally, however, it was a different set of trends which exposed the limitations of the older 233 technology.
The turn towards wet sanding, for example, was an early sign of difficulty with wet performance. Also, the practice of leaving unfinished cars outside for extended periods of time, often resulted in tape residue left on the vehicle.
Thus, in designing the new and improved 233+ line, the top priority for 3M’s development team was adhesive transfer--ensuring the glue would hold faster to the tape than it would to the vehicle. To make matters more urgent, auto manufacturers at the time introduced new and more advanced materials that caused additional trouble for the painters relying on 233.
To guarantee it would rise to every conceivable challenge, the newly formulated tape underwent an intensive two-year field evaluation in selected test markets. Shops in each market (Phoenix, Jacksonville and Regina) were given samples and told to put it through its paces.
For the entirety of the testing phase from 1995 to 1997, 3M incorporated the complaints and suggestions of working collision repairers into countless reformulations and tweaks of the new tape. Eventually, the development team narrowed it down to four versions. It was then that things started to get colourful.
“When it was down to a question of which of these four constructions we would run with, it was decided that the shop painters would get the last word and make the decision,” Rick says.
3M was well aware of the importance of colour; painters associated high-performance masking tape with the beige hue of original 233 tape and the first samples were produced with a view to matching it. But, Rick says, there was a problem. “We’d give a painter two beige samples and ask him which one he liked better. Invariably, he’d get confused and forget which one was which. That’s when we got the idea to colour-code them.”
The blind tests were restarted with beige, red, green and gold rolls. Not only did the performance data become more reliable, but the painters raved about the advantages of having coloured tape on the car. “They would report how much easier it was to de-mask a vehicle, some even told us that they found it easier to locate on the shelf. We started to look at a bright colour as a way to fill our mandate of switching customers from the old tape to the new as quickly as possible.”
After further, strictly colour-oriented market-testing, Rick’s marketing team eventually settled on green for the launch of the 233+ line.
Finally in 1997, armed with a new high-performance tape boasting unprecedented, industry approved performance and design, 3M set about the task of converting the industry. Some 8,000 distributors and shops were furnished with samples.
“Out of all the major product upgrades we’d done, this one had the highest existing market share to contend with. If anything, that made it more difficult,” Rick says. “Typically a new product launch means the reps have an opportunity to increase sales in new parts of the market, but this was a case where the focus was on our current users. Old habits die hard.”
Within the first year, 3M reps converted over 80% of existing customers. Rick says the key to this success was the logistical advantage afforded by the location of the manufacturing plant in Brockville, ON. “The plant is only a few hours from our head office so we had a very short supply chain. It also meant the reps were able to come in and see for themselves why this was truly a different and better product, not just a new colour and box,” Rick explains. “When a rep encountered a skeptic in the field, he had the authority to say, ‘Take it from me. I’ve seen this tape work and it’s much different.’” Once again, it was face-to-face consultation that won the day for 3M’s green tape.
Today, virtually 100% of former users of beige 233 have gone green. Now, with waterborne an imminent fact of life, even the last of the loyalists might be compelled to follow suit. “The old product is a very natural, rubber-based adhesive that just doesn’t like to get wet,” Rick says. “We can demonstrate that 233+ is so plainly better in that area, I think even the most hard-core 233 user would probably want to upgrade to the green stuff.”
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