As a brand that’s a little over a century old, Godrej has managed to stand the test of time and keep up with the times. Sunil Kataria, Chief Operating Officer, Sales & Marketing & SAARC, Godrej Consumer Products Limited (GCPL) tells us why innovation and integration are helping the brand stay alive and awesome.
Q] GCPL repositioned its flagship brand Cinthol last year, from being mass market to a premium youth brand, and expanded its product range. What was the strategy around this and how has the response been so far?
We wanted to psychographically target the changing Indian consumers and their ‘youth explorer’ mindset. They want to feel alive and go out and explore the world to the fullest—which was pretty much the inspiration behind our new positioning ‘Alive Is Awesome’.
Thanks to this ‘Alive Is Awesome’ platform, our aspiration now is to be a premium personal care brand; so we consciously made the move to go beyond soaps. We revamped our entire range of deodorant sprays, and introduced the new Cinthol Shower Gel—a segment which we believe has huge potential in the market—along with three new variants of premium soaps.
Q] Cinthol has always been associated with celebrities, the most recent one being Virat Kohli. How does the cricketer resonate with the brand’s image? What are the marketing initiatives that you will be undertaking with him?
Virat Kohli is a national youth icon, who’s passionate about life and is willing to go through a lot of varied experiences. Combine his personality with Cinthol’s new positioning, and you have a strong match.
We repositioned the brand in September 2012, with a 360-degree campaign introducing the positioning ‘Alive Is Awesome’. In February 2013, we launched the deo spray campaign, featuring Virat and how the challenges he faces make him feel alive.
We took this campaign to the social media space too, where we asked people to tweet about what they thought was in Virat’s head, along with the hashtag #InViratsHead, which got a huge response. We are now building on that campaign with a new hashtag #ChallengeVirat, where we’ve put up a video of Virat asking followers to throw a challenge at him, with an opportunity to meet him and settle it face to face. We’re also making a series of videos where Virat will respond personally to some of these challenges.
Q] How do you compare your positioning with other brands?
We see ourselves as a unisex brand and we believe that our positioning puts us in a unique space. Right from the days of actor Vinod Khanna and cricketer Imran Khan, Cinthol has had a high glamour, premium quotient. We have carried this quotient forward and our differentiated product portfolio will help us connect better with the youth.
Q] Aamir Khan is now the face of the flagship Godrej brand, and he’s currently promoting Good Knight and Aer in the campaign. How has this association helped GCPL?
So far, the feedback has been encouraging. The purpose of the masterbrand campaign was not to sell a specific product, but to promote the concept ‘ideas that make life brighter’ and unveil the power and spectrum of each of Godrej’s products with inbuilt innovative technology.
The central idea was to have Aamir discover the idea of a brighter life through each product. The actor is innovative in what he does and is trustworthy—which are also the values of Godrej. This campaign will continue in various phases throughout the year, and you will also see integration with each of the businesses.
Q] What are the fundamental principles of your marketing strategy?
We have an integrated marketing communication approach, which we’ve begun to put into practice. So while TV remains the lead medium, we are going to see a lot of social media activity too. The Cinthol Alive and Hit Kill Malaria campaign are examples of that. Looking ahead, you will see similar digital activity all year round across other brands as well. We will also invest in a lot in activations. Consumer activation is tough to execute, but we have identified certain priority markets for various brands. From this year onwards, we will also do more radio and print activities.
Q] What is your strategy to counter your competition in the competitive, aggressive hair care space?
In the hair colour space, we believe we are the market leaders. We recently launched a breakthrough product Godrej Expert Rich Crème hair colour sachets, priced at Rs 30 per sachet. The affordable cost, innovation and the huge distribution gamut are our strengths. To connect with consumers, we have roped in actor Ram Kapoor to endorse the product, as he has an endearing personality and a strong fan following. Hair colour is also a segment where the inertia to try the product is the highest; so we use strong influencers like beauty salons and barbers as part of our activation, to help build the brand through word of mouth.
Q] You upped your advertising and publicity expenses by 48% in the last quarter, largely on the back of new launches. Are these spends likely to rise?
The key for us is not spends but innovation. As part of our ‘three by three’ strategy, we focus on three continents, Asia, Africa and Latin America, and three core categories of home, personal and hair care. Innovation will happen in all three categories as it will be critical for our growth in the next three to four years. We will back our innovations with investments and you will see the right kind of investment behind every new product launch. Within our product R&D, we have clearly identified areas where we want to expand our knowledge and competencies, and we have upped our entire R&D competencies over the last two years. Hit Anti-Roach gel, Godrej Aer Click, Godrej Expert Rich Crème sachets are all examples of our technical innovations. We have also acquired companies internationally and we are now getting benefits of cross pollination of ideas across geographies, which will drive our consumer insights.
Q] What are the challenges that you encounter while marketing your wide portfolio of products?
The biggest challenge is the huge amount of fragmentation across all categories; the number of products and brands we see in every category is humongous. The challenge for a marketer is to come up with strong consumer insights, which can lead to a truly differentiated product. Until we have a strong differentiated product, we will not be able to succeed in the long run. Fragmentation in the media is also a big challenge as media consumption by the Indian consumer is becoming more complex. The challenge is to take our communication message across multiple platforms to consumers effectively.
Q] Are you looking at introducing other grooming products?
We are evaluating more categories, which is an on-going process. We will get into more premium and skin-care segments, when the time is right.
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