The formulating philosophy is often different for different classes of marketers. For example, the formulating approach for a high volume producer in a highly competitive market often starts with the marketing department. Marketing determines what claims they will need to make in order to achieve their specific goals, such as increased sales volume, profit, market position, growth, approvals, etc. These claims are then presented to the technical group who will design a testing protocol with specifications targets to support the claims. Legal and statisticians will then approve the testing protocol and specification targets to assure they can defend the claims from competitive challenges.
At this point the technical group formulates to the specification targets using the testing protocol and aiming for the lowest cost to meet the targets.
For example, let’s say marketing wishes to make a wear claim to exploit what they perceive as a weakness in their competitor’s product. Their testing of the competitor’s oil shows a wear result of 70 mg in the Sequence IVA wear test, so they direct technical to develop an oil with one-third of this value so they can claim “Three times the wear protection compared to Brand X”.
Legal approves the Sequence IVA test as a defendable industry standard, but the statisticians report that the test reproducibility is let’s say + - 17 mg, so all results below 34 mg are considered equal. The specification target is then reset to
Technical then develops an oil that meets all targets and delivers a great wear result of only 12 mg. This result, however, does not allow any additional claims since it is considered equal to a result of 34 mg. Technical now reduces the amount of the expensive anti-wear additive to achieve a result of say 33 mg and shaves five cents per quart off the cost. With projected sales of 100 million quarts, this saves the company five million dollars and marketing is able to make its claim.
Small companies often do not have the resources to play this game and are usually trying to compete against all majors rather than a specific competitor. Their claims are also often under less scrutiny. This may drive them to be more creative, in some cases making better oils using innovative additives or more expensive ingredients, in other cases equivalent oils at a lower cost using approved formulas from additive companies, and in yet other cases exaggerated or vague claims base on non-standard test methods, using terms such as “Recommended for use” or “Formulated to meet” some specification.
In short, there are good small oil companies and bad small oil companies and the buyer must be more careful. Fortunately most are good, and there are organizations that strive to keep these companies honest, such as PQIA, API, and ILMA, and the major competitors may also step in if the small company poses a threat.
Most small oil companies offer real value to consumers and should be taken seriously. The consumer simply needs to be a bit more cautious and read the labels carefully, looking for certification marks, OEM approvals, claim wording, and considering the reputation of the company.
TomNJ/VA
