Giving Teenage look to Mothers

Incidentally my elder sister, with whom I have very good ( read not good) relationship, never grew older than 16 years although my age crossed the mark of 22 this year.

Well recently I went through the ad of Santoor soap, a brand of Wipro Consumer Care And Lighting (WCCL), FMCG unit of one of the largest IT player of India. Well it is really very interesting that in this age of cut throat competition with so much emphasis on new age of marketing , how come a brand which didn’t change its outlook managed to survive. Perhaps there is something more related to this other than just strong branding. According to Economic times, total market share of Santoor is 7.5%. This is third largest in India. Also with 15.1% market share it is largest brand in south India. So what exactly made this happen? Santoor was launched in 1985 as a normal soap with an advertisement of a mother with her small daughter whereas, the other brands advertised themselves as beauty soaps in their campaign. But still the soap not only exists in the market but also has shown a great deal of growth as the growth rate has been the highest in the past quarter. Well the answer lies in the question only!

The position of the brand was as being a normal soap made of sandal and turmeric. Thus, giving the name Santoor (not extracted from music instrument as widely believed) helped in growth. Well initial times did not show any positive sign of growth when it was launched. It was only after the launch of campaign ‘For Younger Looking Skin’ that this soap gained the pace. This campaign was launched with ad showing a mother with five year old daughter, a high contrast from traditional trend with protagonist where a teenager is shown, thus positioning it far from different brand which only used to concentrate on beautiful and great skin. This gave a unique image to the soap and also used the weakest point of women’s, young look (well probably as you can never guess what they think exactly). Also as the soap was normal and nothing was special added to it, the soap is good for any type of skin, not creating allergies and any other disease helped the cause of the marketing as every customer was satisfied with it.

The brand periodically changed the role of mother from normal housewife to fitness cautious mother to working woman to modern housewife which now stand the queues for bills. All these ads evolved with changing role of the woman of middle class family in India. This factor helped the soap to connect with the masses.

However, in recent times it also used Saif Ali Khan for its branding thus , adding the male factor to the soap, a new dimension. Whether this strategy will pay off or not is yet to be seen. Anyways hats off to WCCL and their marketing strategy which was very simple but yet very effective. To capture the imagination of mass with product, this was definitely not the strong point of the company; still they managed to fight with FMCG brands of India with their unique attributes. Thus, it can be concluded that essence of brand positioning has a sustainable advantage and gives consumers a compelling reasons why they should buy it .

After all, ‘Iski twacha se to iski umra ka pata hi nahi lagta’.

Contributed By: Nitesh Singhal