The Lifebuoy Story

Repositioning of a brand

Shailesh Gururani

MBA

NBA group of institutions

Content

IntroductionThe Lifebuoy SagaRepositioning InitiativesImpact of repositioningBrand repositioning by

CadburyReferences

LIFEBUOY

- Launched in the United Kingdom in 1894, Lifebuoy is one of the Unilever’s oldest

brands, and has championed a message of health through hygiene for more than a century

- One of the Unilever’s founders, William lever, launched the Lifebuoy brand to help bring

affordable hygiene to Victorian England at a time when epidemics of typhoid, smallpox, cholera and diphtheria were a constant threat.

- In 2000, 189 nations promised to reduce poverty and improve the lives of millions by

2015. Lifebuoy’s ‘Clean Hands’ campaign has made a significant contribution to the goal of reducing deaths among children under the age of five by two-thirds and prevents disease.

- Lifebuoy branded hygiene promotion activations, such as Swasthya Chetna in India,

Berbagi Sehat in Indonesia and Germ fighters in Sri Lanka have educated over 125 million people about the importance of handwashing with soap.

- The Lifebuoy Clinical Trial in 2007/8 demonstrated that by following the Lifebuoy Way

(washing hands at 5 key occasions during the day), episodes of diarrhoea in target children reduced by 25% and target children had 40% less days off school due to illness, compared with the control group.

- Lifebuoy was one of the driving forces behind the first ever Global Hand washing Day,

uniting with partners to educate and inspire children to adopt a healthy hand hygiene habit.

The Lifebuoy Saga

Lifebuoy is a product of Hindustan Unilever limited (HUL), India. HUL was formed in India in 1933 as Lever Brothers India Limited and came into being in 1956 as Hindustan Lever limited through a merger of Lever Brothers, Hindustan Vanaspati Mfg Co. Ltd. and United Traders Ltd. It is headquartered in Mumbai, India and has an employee strength of over 16,500 employees and contributes to indirect employment of over 65,000 people. The company was renamed in June 2007 as “Hindustan Unilever Limited”. Lifebuoy is actually a brand which was invented globally before the term ‘Global Branding’ itself was invented. For years lifebuoy had perceived the image of a masculine soap in the consumer’s mind. It’s campaign had a sporty look with the slogan ‘Tandarusti ki raksha karta hai Lifebuoy’. Backed by its strong carbolic smell and a promise of masculine health, the soap blended health with value for money. The soap led the soap market in the 1970’s, 80’s, finally becoming the first soap brand of the country. The parent company maintained the same brand identity for 107 years and got the Brand image of the sporty , masculine, health and hygiene oriented soap in the Indian consumers’ mind.

However, the late 90’s saw the entry of beauty soaps like Nirma bath, Camey, Santoor etc. and lifebuoy’s market started experiencing a decline. In 2001, its sales dropped by 15%. In 2002, it went down by 82000 tonnes.

There were mainly two reasons for lifebuoy’s decline in the market. First, definitely the entry of newer products which made the consumers think,

why should one buy Lifebuoy when all soaps clean. Lifebuoy’s then prevalent identity had no answer to that.

Secondly, and most importantly, the then generation had the woman of the house making purchase decisions and hence a shift in sales from masculine and healthy Lifebuoy to beauty promising soaps. What lifebuoy needed was a change of brand image built over a period of 107 years.

Repositioning Initiatives

Originally, Lifebuoy was a down market brand but after the decline in sales in 2001-02 it had made efforts to position it as more of an upscale prduct. Hindustan Unilever Limited has positioned Lifebuoy as a pan India brand, targeted at every Indian family, urban or rural, rich or poor. It aims at bringing alive Lifebuoy’s promise of family health in an enjoyable and compelling manner. HUL repositioned the Lifebuoy brand in 2002, in an attempt to make it more relevant to both new and existing customers.

For an image makeover

First the product was given a transformation. The chuncky, masculine look was changed to a curvy look. The carbolic smell was substituted by perfume fragrance. The packaging now showed a whole family on the cover and promised a better bathing experience for the whole family.

The company launched a variety of products such as Lifebuoy Active Gold, Lifebuoy Plus, Lifebuoy Active Orange, Lifebuoy Active Green and Lifebuoy Talc. However, the product transformation needed massive campaigning to convey the message to the people. Hence, this time Lifebuoy focused on the woman of the house. The soap promised freedom from acne, germs, skin infections, cuts and bruises and body odour. The advertisement showed the whole family using the soap. Likewise the ‘Tandrusti ki ……’ logo was changed to ‘Kya aap Lifebuoy se nahaye kya’?

Realizing the importance of philanthrophy and corporate social responsibility the Lifebuoy launched ‘Swasthya Chetna Programme” IN 2002 as a rural health and hygiene initiative in India. In partnership with local government bodies, the Swasthya Chetna programme continues to raise awareness about the importance of handwashing with soap to prevent disease, with the central message ‘Visibly clean is not really clean’. Lifebuoy teams visit each village involved in the programme three times, at a total cost of US$30 per village. Activities involve schoolchildren, parents and the wider village community. By the end of 2008, the Swasthya Chetna programme had reached more than 120 million people in 50,600 rural villages, making it the single largest private hygiene education project in the world, with investment of over US$5 million from Hindustan Unilever Ltd.

In 2005 came the ‘Koi darr nahi’ campaign which proved a tipping point for Lifebuoy sales and further projected it as a health icon brand. The campaign talked about the confidence Lifebuoy consumers get from germ protection. The advertisement showed children cleaning up colony squalor or drying up a cricket field to help India win a match and their mother worried about their health as Lifebuoy was protecting them from germs. The campaigns sales can be inferred from its sales: Lifebuoy occumpied around 17.9 % of the Rs. 4200 crores domestic sales market in 2005 and has been growing at the rate of 20% in terms of value each year.

Impact of repositioning

The result we see today is a completely transformed brand identity of Lifebuoy, form a masculine brand to family soap which promises mothers a germ free skin for their family and also a brand which has learnt to change with time. The immediate impact on the sales of lifebuoy after relaunching in 2002 can be seen from the HUL’s Balance Sheet of quarter ended 31st March 2002 with a net profit of Rs 428.54 crores, an increase of 26.2% over the corresponding period of 2001.

After the conscious re-launch, Lifebuoy’s market share in the bath soap sector rose to 30 and 20% in the first two years and then . The second major milestone was in 2004, when lifebuoy was launched with four new variants and all the variants came under one umbrella. According to HUL, this too was a big success in both sales and image association terms. Given the category and the competitiveness therein, it's not surprising that Lifebuoy has attempted to refresh itself every few years. Over the years, there are many campaigns from the brand that are fresh in public memory, right from the sweaty players con the football field to the Little Gandhi advertisements.

"If you compare Lifebuoy with Dettol soap in terms of value share, it can be seen that the value share for Lifebuoy has actually declined over the last three years as compared to Dettol. Dettol has been giving a stiff competition to Lifebuoy.

In a report published in the economic times on 26 April 2012 stating the personal care segment of HUL earned a sale of 4.26 billion pounds on account of Lifebuoy’s market campaign in India.

Achievements:

Leader in the soaps market with a Market share of 14% Sales turnover - 350 million Euros worldwide and 200 million Euros in India 140 million households as a consumer base

Coining of the best slogan which equates to a health prayer for the nation Awards for the top ten most trusted brands

The value share of Lifebuoy in 2007 was 12.7 per cent and in 2010 it was 11.8 per cent.Lifebuoy focused on rural market and campaigned for educating rural folks due to which 70% of the sales are from rural India.

Though all marketing strategies has been successful over the years, but one cannot deny the decline in market share because of the intense competition. To remain the market leader Lifebuoy needed to do much more than that especially after 2009.

Brand repositioning by Cadbury

On October 2003, just a month before Diwali, the Food and Drug Administration Commissioner received complaints about infestation in two

bars of Cadbury Dairy Milk, Cadbury India’s flagship brand with over 70% market share. He ordered an enquiry and went directly to the media with a statement. Over the following 3-week period, resultant adverse media coverage touched close to 1000 clips in print and 120 on TV news channels. In India, where Cadbury is synonymous with chocolate, the company’s reputation and credibility was under intense scrutiny. Sales volumes came down drastically in the first 10 weeks, which was the festival season; retailer stocking and display dropped, employee morale – especially that of the sales team – was shaken. The challenge was to restore confidence in the key stakeholders (consumers, trade and employees, particularly the sales team) and build back credibility for the corporate brand through the same channels (the media) that had questioned it.

It was decided from the start to address the issue head-on and take whatever steps were necessary to restore confidence. Having historically maintained a low profile with the media and let its brands and its performance speak for it, the company began to cultivate relationships with the media and turn it into an ally and a credible, independent endorser to rebuild stakeholder confidence.The new ‘purity sealed’ packaging was launched in January 2004. By investing up to Rs 15 crore (Rs 150 million) on imported machinery, Cadbury’s revamped the packaging of Dairy Milk. The metallic poly-flow, was costlier by 10-15 per cent, but Cadbury didn’t hike the pack price.This

entailed double wrapping for maximum protection to reducing the possibility of infestation. This was a big step involving investment of millions of dollars and getting on stream a production process in 8 weeks, that would normally take about six months.

Cadbury brought in a brand ambassador to reinforce the credibility that the company had demonstrated through its actions. Amitabh Bachchan, a legendary Indian film star, was chosen, as he embodied the values of Cadbury as a brand and connected with all of India – mothers, teenagers, children, media persons and trader partners.

There was significant upward movement in ratings amongst consumers on parameters like company image, responsiveness of company and behavioral parameters like intention to buy Cadbury chocolates. While the new product introduction and advertising had their role to play in the changing consumer perceptions, the media’s positive coverage and the trade’s positive pre-disposition played a huge part in helping Cadbury regain its reputation in the market.

References

http://www.hul.co.in/

Brand management by mahim sagar,

Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindustan_Unilever

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-04-26/news/31410281_1_consumer-goods-giant-unilever-strong-sales-first-quarter

http://www.healthkart.com/brand/personal-care/Lifebuoy#

http://www.mbaknol.com/management-case-studies/case-study-cadbury-crisis-management-worm-controversy/