Positioning of cinthol

Confidence Code
Byravee Iyer / New Delhi April 15, 2008

Godrej hopes to take Cinthol to its place among the stars.
Confidence, adventure, machoism…. You would associate all these attributes with bike advertisements or with films starring Bollywood hunks like Hrithik Roshan. But, jumping off cliffs or rafting over raging water-bodies for a toilet soap?
As the country’s second largest toilet soap maker, Godrej Consumer decided to relaunch its flagship brand Cinthol last month, it decided to let Hindi film star Roshan do what he’s best at.
Accompanying the new action-packed television commercial that’s currently on air, is an entirely repackaged offering from the Cinthol franchise.
The company has relaunched its entire range of soaps, deodorants, and talcs in three fragrances — Classic, Cologne and Sport. To send one cohesive brand message across price points and variants a “24-hour confidence” stamp is also affixed on all products carrying the Cinthol nameplate.
Revamp RationaleLast year, Godrej Group Chairman Adi Godrej unveiled the results of a brand valuation exercise undertaken by international brand valuation consultants, Brand Finance for the group. The report card showed that there was immense scope for improvement.
While the potential value of its top five brands — Cinthol, Fairglow, Godrej No 1, Ezee and Godrej Powder Hair Dye — was Rs 3,900 crore, their realised value was at only Rs 2,600 crore.
What explained the Rs 1,300-crore gap? Brands like Cinthol. The brand had a huge equity, but that was hardly being reflected in sales. For instance, in 2007, retail audits pegged the market share of Cinthol at less than 3 per cent in the Rs 6,000-crore toilet soap category.
Then, toilet soaps were growing slower than hair colours in the Godrej portfolio. There was also a lot of gap to close with the market leader, Hindustan Unilever. With a combined market share of 9.4 per cent (a bulk of it coming from the volume soap, Godrej No 1), Godrej’s far behind Hindustan Unilever’s 54 per cent share of toilet soaps (Source: Angel Broking).
Brand Cinthol is also a shadow of its former self. In the 1980s to a better part of the 1990s, Bollywood superstar Vinod Khanna and Pakistani cricketer Imran Khan, both of them at the peak of their careers, pitched for Cinthol. By 1993, the soap boasted of an 18 per cent share of the premium segment of toilet soaps.
Then, Cinthol’s fortunes took a turn for the worse. Between 1993 and 1996, it got in-and-out-of a joint venture with Procter & Gamble (P&G), the aftermath of which saw Godrej’s overall market share in soaps slip to a measly 5 per cent.
Post the P&G partition, Godrej relaunched its Cinthol International variant. But the results were negligible, says market observers with the brand being perceived by many as old-fashioned and male centric.
In March 1999, the Rs 15-crore Cinthol advertising account shifted from Madison to Ambience D’Arcy. The campaign made a conscious effort to move away from its masculine perception and took a more unisex approach. But these efforts did little to push up market share.
Godrej is now taking another shot at reinvigorating the brand. “Cinthol is the flagship brand of Godrej. But we haven’t given it due attention. We stretched it too much without a unified platform. We now intend to bring it under one umbrella while making it more relevant to the young male audience,” says Tanya Dubash, Executive Director and President (Marketing) Godrej Industries.
Brand Consultants agree. Harish Bijoor, CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults says, “A brand needs to be specific and every soap must have a niche appeal. Somethings are not for everybody.”
Competitive ChallengeThe company conducted a poll on 27 groups consisting of eight consumers in each group across eight cities. The focus group participants included both users of the soap as well as buyers of competing brands.
The objective of the study was to understand the values associated with each brand, their strengths and weaknesses and finally the contribution of the different brands to the overall brand equity.
The brief given to creative agency Orchard Advertising was to understand the equity of the Cinthol brand vis-à-vis its competition and translate what the brand stood for in the consumers’ mind into effective packaging and marketing communication.
“The communication had to be relevant to the target audience — the confident achiever who wants to live an active lifestyle,” says Sameer Penkar, General Manager Marketing, Godrej Consumer Products.
Yet because of the varying price points, the company needed to ensure that it delivered a single message to consumers of brand Cinthol, rather than design variant specific communication, he adds.
“Cinthol has always stood for confidence. We, therefore, needed to decode what confidence meant to youngsters, which helped us develop a clearer position. This position needs to be attitudinal, therefore, the new 24-hour confidence and the ‘don’t stop’ concept,” adds Dubash.
The new ad represents just that. The racy campaign features Roshan pulling off dare-devil stunts. The ad starts off with the actor running through the wilderness and across roof tops. This is followed by the actor indulging in incredible feats of bungee jumping, rafting, and horse riding.
The campaign ends with Hrithik playing football. He looks into the camera and says “Don’t stop.” Dubash says, “We saw a complete fit between what Cinthol stands for and Hrithik’s values. He exemplifies energy, passion, and the ‘don’t stop’ attitude to achieve what he wants to. That is exactly what our brand represents, as well.”
Bijoor adds, “Hrithik has sex appeal and Cinthol has always used celebrities with that kind of appeal. Be it Imran Khan or Vinod Khanna. Moreover, after Jodhaa Akbar, Hrithik’s appeal has only widened. He will be a great fit with the brand.”
Apart from the conventional TV, print, and cinema promotions, the company’s 360-degree campaign includes outdoor visibility, modern retail activation, digital marketing initiatives and communication through short messaging service (SMS). It also plans to beef up its rural distribution.
The competition is unlikely to sit back and watch. Years ago, when Godrej relaunched the Cinthol International variant, its rival swooped in and relaunched Liril.
Likewise, in 2004, HLL launched Fair & Lovely soap in response to Godrej’s successful FairGlow brand. If history is anything to go by, the action will not be restricted to just Cinthol’s TV commercial this summer.