Febreze is a magical product. It kills smells in fabric and other things. Whether you believe it or not, its buyers do believe it. One product that hit the shelves in the not too distant past was Febreze laundry supplement (can't remember the real name). Add it to your laundry detergent and it took the smell out of clothes (perception or reality, does it really matter?). An actually pretty good product from my perspective.

Then, in a surprise move, it disappeared from the shelves. What?! Why did it go away? What happened to it? Thinking it was a momentary lapse in product on the shelves, I found that it never came back... until now! But, in a different form...

Introducing Tide with Febreze! What?? What about my standalone Febreze addition... ah! It all makes sense now.

P&G, Febreze and Tide's parent company, has essentially put the Febreze in Tide and taken it out of all my other laundry detergents. I buy whatever's cheap - Wisk, All, private label, whatever. Febreze worked well with those products. While it's a guess, maybe it worked too well.

Generalizing this strategy, whether P&G did this deliberately or not (rolls eyes), is that a feature can be a category killer. Think cup holders, think Oxi/Oxy/whatever. Because P&G owned the feature (smell reduction) of this category (laundry detergent), it could move it to its brand leader Tide exclusively.

Clever and annoying.