Sunil Gadgil, Director, Marketing, Nivea India, explains how innovation is the need of the hour to take on the big spenders in the fast growing skin care category. According to him, ensuring bang for the buck is Brand Nivea’s way of getting around a tight marketing budget
Q] Anushka Sharma and Parineeti Chopra are the face of your deodorant/body care and face cleansing products. How has associating with the young talent of Bollywood helped Brand Nivea?
The reason for using Bollywood personalities is to attract eyeballs, so there are more multipliers to our media spend, as we have got less to spend on media, but we want all the media to stick. That is why it is not like endorsement; we use them like character artistes, just that they are known.
Q] Are Indian men waking up to the need and importance of bodycare products? How is your communication targeted to men?
The male brands are not yet alive in India, but in terms of bodycare for Indian men, yes, the market is picking up. Deodorants is the new category, clearly grooming at the body level is going up but it is still face forward. So face washes, face creams - that is the space where men are adopting the category very fast along with deodorants.
Q] When you think of Nivea, the blue round tin immediately comes to mind. What are the challenges in marketing and translating this equity from goodwill for the brand to other categories?
The blue tin is the core of our existence. We need to leverage the blue tin values and make them relevant to our other categories because the blue tin is for a certain season and a certain skin type, but the market is much bigger than that. So, how do you take the Nivea values and make them relevant to a body lotion and to a female deodorant? That’s the marketing part. The good point is that Nivea is very strong on care; it stands for skin health and that is relevant in many categories that we play in. So it is an easy transition.
Q] Among the various products in your portfolio, which category contributes the most to your growth? Which category will be your focus going ahead?
At a skin care level from an overall category perspective, face washes is growing very fast. We have just entered that category and body lotions is another category which is growing very fast, where we are among the top three brands. Body creams and body lotions are also big players as well as deodorants.
Q] How does your current marketing mix look like? Are you planning to up your ad spends in the coming year?
It is still very TV-heavy, because our media monies compared to the market are very low; we are first focusing on making our place on TV, but increasingly we will spend beyond TV. In all categories that we play in, we try to maintain a share of voice to share of market of 1. So if we are having say X% of market share, we also have the same percentage of share of voice depending on category. In future too, we will be maintaining the share of voice with respect to the share of market that we play.
Q] Could you give us a sense of the evolution in your marketing strategy and the innovations that you look for as part of your strategy?
The innovation focus is currently on products; we are trying to bring product value propositions which are new to Indian consumers, which give them reason to think of Nivea versus other brands. Once we have that product range in the market, we will talk about innovating in terms of connecting. We will be focused on doing these because we have to fight in a very big market. So you will see many more such things come out because the budgets are limited and we really have to go out of the box to play.
Q] You have been very innovative on the digital platform. Are you planning to expand and up your spends in this space?
We will be looking at upping our digital ad spends; currently it would be at around 4% of our annual budget – we would at least double it in the time to come. We will be using it more to engage consumers with Brand Nivea because today the brand has a lot of goodwill but people don’t necessarily think of it when they go about their lives everyday. So we see digital as a way to connect Brand Nivea with the consumers that we target.
Q] What is your future growth strategy?
The growth strategy currently is about focusing on areas of strength that we have, which is the body care space in the female category. We will consolidate our position there before entering any other categories.
Q] Nivea is perceived as a premium product, and priced higher than competitor brands… Does this brand positioning define Nivea, or would you look at marketing to the masses in future?
I think rather than mass or class, the affordability for Nivea products will improve… but we will not bring down our prices just for the sake of affordability. We will try to bring in new products which are better than the market and make them affordable.
Q] What are the challenges that Brand Nivea faces in the Indian market?
The skin-care market is over-rated; it is one of the faster growing sub-segments within personal care, so all the brands in hair care and soaps are trying to extend into skin-care. The advertisement versus sales ratio for the category is very high. So, you really need to fight it out to make your presence felt; it’s a red category as one would say.
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