Pure, fresh, natural.
So goes the thinking behind the snowballing phenomenon of "clear" consumer products.Shoppers are being tempted with everything from clear beer to transparent trash bags to the seemingly silly product, clear mascara.
Some of these goods are grounded in practicality.
Ban Clear was developed for people who like a solid deodorant but not the flaky, white residue that sticks to the underarms.
And transparent trash bags can make it easier for people to separate trash for recycling. They also decay more quickly, according to the packaging.
But, for the most part, these new products are just plain "goofy," said Jack Trout of Trout & Ries, a Greenwich, Conn., marketing consulting firm.
"Let's start with clear beer," Trout said. "That's just bizarre - they're challenging people's perceptions of their existing prod-ucts."
That is, companies could eventually hurt sales of their mainstay products.
Trout uses clear colas as an example. "Consumers start asking, `What's this brown stuff?' " Trout said. "They're starting to send bad messages about their existing brands."
Manufacturers disagree. Adolph Coors Co. recently launched a clear malt, Zima, that has 3.7 percent alcohol content and is designed to appeal to a different customer - mainly women - than the typical beer drinker.
Ditto for PepsiCo Inc. of Purchase, N.Y., which decided a couple of years ago to develop a new product - Pepsi Crystal - to go along with the heightened interest in health and the environment.
"Consumers, through focus groups, are actually the ones who told us what they were looking for," said Amy Sherwood, a PepsiCo spokeswoman.
They wanted a more natural product that was less sweet, lighter and had no caffeine, she said.
"After we determined that those were the attributes they wanted in this new product, clear seemed to be the way to go," Sherwood said. "Really, Pepsi Crystal isn't about being clear. It just happens that that was the best way to convey the attributes that consumers said they wanted."
Exactly, said Diane Mustain, an analyst with Duff & Phelps in Chicago. So don't be fooled.
"Just because it's clear doesn't mean it really has less calories or is healthier," Mustain said. "By being clear, the consumer is more likely to think so. But the perception of the product might be vastly different than the reality."
Sometimes manufacturers tinker with existing brands for no good reason, Trout said.
"If a manufacturer develops a whole new concept and product, it might make sense to do something like this," he said. "But in most of these cases you have rooms full of marketing people who have nothing better to do than tinker. They should just leave it alone."
Trout cited Procter & Gamble Co.'s reformulation of Ivory dishwashing soap. The company recently replaced its longstanding creamy-white Ivory with a clear formula in a clear bottle.
"They're changing a product for no good reason," Trout said. "The road to chaos is paved with changes."
But Lynn Hailey of Procter & Gamble said there was a sound reason for the move. Ivory now does a better job of cutting grease, the company says.
"We improved the product, and because we made this revolutionary change, we felt we needed to highlight these changes," Hailey said. "Consumers told us they liked the clear soap."
Other clear products include mascara, gasoline and mouthwash.
Clear gasoline, available at Amoco, is designed to go easier on the environment because it reduces emissions and deposits on engine components.
And clear mascara? You can't see it when it's on, but it's designed to style eyelashes without darkening them.
But for the most part, analysts say manufacturers are playing a dangerous game.
"These products are supposed to be pure and wholesome, but in many cases they're creating confusion or are cannibalizing their own market share," said Denise Smart, a marketing professor at the University of Nebraska-Omaha.
"The jury is still out on this, but I don't think this will last," she said. "It's going to be difficult to convince consumers they should buy these products over the long term."