Vineet Jain, General Manager – Marketing, Consumer Products Division, The Himalaya Drug Company talks about the company’s marketing plans and strategy to up their market-share in the personal care category in India
By Saloni Dutta
What is intrinsic to all your marketing initiatives for different brands under personal care at Himalaya?
Our marketing mantra is to keep the consumer at the core of all our marketing activities. We focus on understanding the consumers and finding segments where we can fit in, identifying need gaps and then trying to position our products so that we can fulfil needs and make a difference in consumers’ lives. Himalaya as a company believes in bringing wellness to every home and our personal care division follows that vision wherein we are trying to bring in solutions to problems in their lives.
Secondly, we have always tried to attack niches in the industry, the first big brand that we built being Himalaya Purifying Neem Face-wash. We started our marketing activities in 2007 and then the face-wash market in India stood at around Rs100 crore and with penetration lower than 5%. We brought in the proposition of removing and preventing pimples in the face-wash category. This boosted the category phenomenally. Today, the face-wash category in urban India is at Rs 1200 crore, out of which the biggest segment is pimple clearing. This year we are focussing a lot on the digital medium as we have realized that driving conversations increase the word of mouth and the brand love. We are driving love for the brand through engaging conversations on the digital medium.
What was the idea behind reinventing the communication for your Neem Face-wash?
After changing the communication and driving people to use face-wash as a product, we decided to move on with the communication. The next level of change which has come in is because of our business challenge. Today, the penetration of face-wash category stands at around 22% all-India. In our core market, it is around 25%, so the challenge is now to grow penetration. We realized we need to target younger consumers who are learning about grooming and are getting very selective about the product they use. So our communication is targeted at a younger age group of around 14-16-year-olds.
Himalaya ads are also known for bringing in a little bit of sarcasm along with playfulness and catering to the whole problem solution idea of the brand. So both had to be tackled in this particular communication which has been beautifully done by Soho Square and the production house Code Red.
How is the oral care business performing for Himalaya?
The toothpaste category overall is kind of stagnant now. It stands at Rs 4,000 crore in urban India and is growing at 3%. Big players like HUL and Colgate dominate market-share. We realized that there are small segments which are growing very fast, where the bigger companies won’t be focussing. The whitening category stands at around Rs 138 crore only, but is growing at almost 43%. We saw a winning formula there with our sparkling white toothpaste. We use social embarrassment as an emotional hook to develop our new communication along with the herbal USP.
How do you divide your marketing spends across mediums?
TV utilizes a major part of our advertising spends, close to 85%. Though we are a little late in the fray, this year 5% of our budget is going to go into digital. The rest of the spends go into Print, Cinema and Outdoor, in that order of importance. Apart from driving conversations on Digital, You Tube becomes an important part of our spends this year.
What is Himalaya’s market-share?
In urban India, the face-wash category is at around Rs 1200 crore, and growing at around 12%. We plan to grow faster than the category. Currently we stand at 21.3% market-share and we want to take it up to 25% this year. In the whitening toothpaste category, we currently stand at around 6% market-share and we want to take it up to 15% in 2015-16.
In other categories like shampoo, we have already garnered around 5% in select States in the South in the bottle segment, which stands at around Rs 1700 crore for all-India. Overall, we are at around 1.3% but in the South we are 5% in certain States. We want to take that to 3% all-India.
Which categories drive the business for Himalaya and on which categories is the company focussing for growth?
Currently, the face-wash category contributes to 54% of our personal care business. The contribution has been going down each year because other categories are growing much faster. We would be growing more than 60-70% in the toothpaste category this year. We have re-launched our shampoos last year after consumer feedback on product quality and with new packaging and we expect around 40% growth this year.
What would you define as Himalaya’ s USP?
The biggest USP for Himalaya is its herbal lineage; and we garner huge trust when it comes to consumer mindshare. We leverage on herbal as a platform, and consumers are trying to choose natural products over the ones which are chemical-based. Whenever we do consumer interviews and focus group discussions, there is always a positive inclination towards Himalaya’s range of products.
How is the brand presence across markets in India?
In terms of geographies, we are relatively very strong in the South region. We have 21% market share across India in the face-wash segment. But in other categories like toothpaste and shampoos, we have been able to get traction only in certain markets like Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. We have a long way to go in the northern and eastern markets in these two categories.
The West is our second best market, and we are doing good in Maharashtra and gaining a lot of traction in Gujarat. Talking about channels, modern trade has been a stronghold for us.
What is the company’s strategy to maintain leadership position in the face-wash category?
We have been squeezing out GRPs from a great ATL communication. We also focussed on building distribution over the last few years. This year, we realized that if we want to grow faster than the category, then we have to focus on growing it, which includes increasing penetration and consumption.
For increasing penetration we are focussing on four things: firstly looking at younger consumers; secondly, focus on small value-based entity, with the launch of the Neem Sachet. Thirdly, we are trying to create more reasons for people to shift from soap to face-wash by looking at variants or bringing dual benefits into new products. Fourthly, we want to look at low penetration areas like rural which stand at 5% penetration.
The other thing in terms of strategy is to increase consumption; we plan to shift our current 50-100 ml users to bigger pack sizes which will increase frequency of usage and are looking at introducing much bigger packs than the current 200 ml and innovative consumer offers.
Marketing Tip
Follow Marketing 3.0 by giving the consumer a functional benefit and by taking up cause-related benefits, which would increase the net-present worth of any brand.
CMO File
Vineet Jain is General Manager, Marketing, Consumer Product Division, The Himalaya Drug Company. He joined Himalaya in 2008 as Marketing Manager for the consumer products division for the South-East Asian region-based out of Singapore. In 2013, Jain moved to Himalaya Global Holdings in Dubai as the General Manager for brands across all Himalaya subsidiaries. Jain brings with him over 10 years of experience in the FMCG sector across the Indian and South East Asian market. Prior to joining Himalaya, he worked with SAB Miller, ITC Limited and Proctor & Gamble. He has an MBA in Marketing and Systems from IIM Calcutta and an engineering degree from NIT Raipur.
About the Brand
With a history spanning eight decades in the area of herbal research, Himalaya’s credo is ‘a close relationship with nature’. In 1999, Himalaya entered the personal care segment under the brand name 'Ayurvedic Concepts'. Soon after, the company underwent a rebranding where the entire range was brought under a single umbrella, Himalaya Herbal Healthcare. Starting off operations in Dehradun in the 1930s, the company later spread its wings to Mumbai and across the country. In 1975, the company set up an advanced manufacturing facility in Makali, Bangalore. In 1991, it relocated its R&D facility to Bangalore. Himalaya now operates in over 90 countries and Himalaya Global Holdings Ltd (HGH) is the parent of all Himalaya subsidiaries.
Facts
Creative agency: Soho Square, Lowe Lintas & Partners and Chapter Five
Media agency: Group M
Social and digital media marketing agency: Uth Connect
BTL/Activation agency: Acme Events
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