Godrej Consumer Products’ Ltd (GCPL) brand Good Knight has been a household name in India when it comes to insect repellants. Citing the brand’s latest campaign ‘Subah bolo Good Knight’, Sunil Kataria, Business Head India and SAARC, GCPL gives us an insight into how the company believes in continuously working on creating innovative products for mass markets
By SAMARPITA BANERJEE
Q] What was the thought behind the recent Subah Bolo Good Knight campaign?
This is a pretty big initiative we have launched at Godrej under the brand Good Knight. Good Knight is a dominant market leader in the insecticide category in India. We have been a pioneer and innovator in this entire category for many decades now. Most innovations you see in the insecticide category across formats have been pioneered by Good Knight. We also believe that we can contribute a lot to help protect the people of India against vector-borne diseases that are on the rise. One of the changes we have seen in recent years is the rise of dengue. The interesting part is, while all other mosquitoes breed and strike in the evenings and night hours, dengue-causing mosquitoes infest and bite during the daytime. It can happen in clean water. These are fundamental changes from the normal consumer behaviour around mosquito infestation. So we thought it was very important for us to create a social awareness around the country about it. That’s where this whole idea came about. To our mind, Subah Bolo Good Knight is not a brand campaign. It is, in fact, a social awareness campaign. As leaders, we feel it is our responsibility to create an awareness and habit change in India.
Q] How are you taking the campaign ahead?
I think we have created a very strong campaign. It started with a teaser campaign which said ‘Subah kaun aaya’. This happened on digital only. We followed it up with a very strong Print campaign across the country and now there is a thematic TV campaign that is on the digital platform as well. Rather than a short-term campaign, we see this more as a long-drawn campaign because this involves a habit change. And habit change takes time. So this could happen over a longish period, say a year or more. But the campaign will get refreshed. So we see ourselves doing a lot of things on digital along with the primary mediums. Additionally, we will also do a lot of activation around schools on a very large scale across the country because children being the most affected group are most vulnerable in schools.
Q] Neilsen conducted a survey across 16 cities on behalf of GCPL titled ‘Good Knight Dengue Awareness Report’. What was the most surprising trend that you noticed in the survey?
Before we started the campaign, we knew we had consumer understanding from various researches saying that people did not know that dengue is caused by a day mosquito. But we wanted to go a little deeper into it before deciding our strategies about creating awareness. We commissioned a large-scale quantitative study across 16 cities to dig deeper into perceptions around dengue. While we had a certain hypothesis, some of the findings were quite stark. In urban cities, while 85% of the people know that dengue is a dangerous disease, 90% still don’t know it’s caused by a day mosquito bite, which is worrying. Also, more than 80% people say that they see mosquitoes in the daytime, but believe they are harmless.
Q] What was the marketing and media mix for the campaign?
We started with digital as a teaser and we consciously thought we would create a buzz around the campaign. This was followed up by a full-scale PR launch which we did in Delhi. It was an interesting initiative as we roped in people from other walks of life, such as schools. We also got some paediatricians to speak about how critical it is to create this awareness. We followed it up with a fullfledged Print, TV and digital launch which is currently on. This has been carried across the country in vernacular mediums as well.
Q] What are the product areas promising maximum traction in the Godrej stable currently?
One good thing that has happened at GCPL is that in the last four years, our New Product Development (NPD) journey has been very strong. If you see last year’s results, NPDs have contributed to roughly more than one-third of our growth overall and that’s a key milestone for us as a company. We have sharply moved ahead on the NPD journey, which is bringing us a lot of success.
Q] What is your guiding principle for your overall marketing strategy for the next few years?
Firstly, we are very clear that we would like to be a company which is about catering to mass markets. It does not mean that we would not be playing into premium markets. But we would like to be finally finding products and solutions for the mass markets. Secondly, innovation is the biggest driver of our strategy across Godrej and that forms the foundation of our business. It is visible in the way we are doing NPDs. There is a lot of design around our new products. There is a lot of differentiation, and in some cases, disruption, around our new products. That will continue to be a critical driver of our business in the coming years. We have been doing around three to four product launches every year. In some years, we want even five to six products to be launched in a year. That space, differentiation or disruption around innovation, will continue.
Q] What are the marketing challenges of launching NPDs?
Innovation has a risk element to it. Despite research, there is a certain uncertainty related to consumer behaviour. The uncertainties are, we launch a lot of innovations and we have a very strong strike rate. However, we have to be prepared that some of them may not work. That requires a lot of maturity. You shouldn’t get too stuck with it, you should realize where it went wrong and then bounce back immediately, get into consumer understanding quickly, refix the model and come back strongly. That’s an uncertainty that’s always there with NPDs, but that also is the way of behaviour, a culture that needs to be adopted. Sometimes it might work, sometimes it might not. But you have to take it in your stride and bounce back.
Q] What have been Godrej’s biggest highs in terms of marketing in the last one year?
We have been able to create major disruptions in the launches that we have done. For example, the Good Knight fast card is a completely new format in the industry. While we do not have validated figures, we believe that it could be one of the fastest brands in the country ever in the FMCG industry to touch Rs 100 crore in less than a year. That’s a big disruption. Two years ago, we also launched the Godrej Expert Rich Crème, which was another disruption. It’s actually leading a wave of penetration of crème in India. What we did with hair colours with powders in the 80s is now being done again by creating a disruption in the crème segment. One of our biggest highs in marketing has been our ability to function in a disruptive manner as a team across design, innovation, marketing, R&D and manufacturing and the whole team comes up with major innovative ideas. That’s a big high for us. The way we do innovation is very different from what other companies in the rest of the country do.
ABOUT THE BRAND
Godrej Consumer Products Limited (GCPL) is an Indian consumer goods company based in Mumbai. It is a market leader in the Rs 3800 crore Household Insecticide (HI) market with brands like Hit and GoodKnight leading the industry across all the major formats - coils, liquid vapourizer and aerosols. Its products include soap, hair colourants, toiletries and liquid detergents. Its brands include ‘Cinthol’, ‘Godrej Fair Glow’, ‘Godrej No.1’ and ‘Godrej Shikakai’ in soaps, ‘Godrej Powder Hair Dye’, ‘Renew’, ‘ColourSoft’ in hair colourants and ‘Ezee’ liquid detergent. GCPL currently operates several manufacturing facilities in India spread over seven locations in Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Pondicherry, Chennai and Sikkim.
FACTS
CREATIVE AGENCY: JWT
MEDIA AGENCY: MADISON
PR AGENCY: ADFACTORS PR
CMO FILE
In his current role as Business Head - India and SAARC, GCPL, Sunil Kataria has been responsible for enhancing the sales and marketing capabilities of the organization. Before GCPL, he had a 12-year stint at Marico Industries and was also the Chief Operating Officer at Idea Rajasthan Circle, where he headed business operations and was responsible for the P&L of the Rajasthan Circle
MARKETING TIP
Always meet consumers as human beings and not as brand managers.
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