Advertising Mgt.

Assignment

Santoor on a Roll
Positioning: Santoor was launched in 1985 as an ordinary soap with sandalwood and turmeric as its main ingredients. The brand was initially test marketed in Bangalore and encouraged by the positive response, the brand became national a year after. The brand was positioned as the (beauty + skin care) at a reasonable price and the brand derived strength from the efficacy of the ingredients. The brand derived the name from combining Sandal + Turmeric. Although the brand became popular, the company was not satisfied with the results. The customers were not buying the ingredient story: says M.G. Parameswaran in his book on Brands: FCB Ulka case studies. The research suggested that customers are not correlating the brand with skin care and beauty. Thus started the brain storming on getting the WOW factor, to build the brand. A promotional strategy was decided to make the campaign benefit based advertising rooted in the ingredients. The wow factor came in the form of the new positioning For Younger Looking Skin. The positioning came from the consumer insight that ultimately the customers look for a younger skin which is another smart way of defining beauty. The focus on Younger Skin also acts as a powerful differentiator because other brands were focusing on beautiful skin or looking beautiful. Communicating the Younger Skin concept began using Mistaken Identity theme. The brand has consistently developed this theme over these two decades of its existence. Most of the ads showed spinsters in their campaigns while for Santoor, the protagonist were Mothers. But showing Mother as the protagonist had its issue. The customers felt that since this brand is meant for adults, it will not be soft on skin. This made the company to change the size texture and the shape of the product. The brand also extended itself to a range of beauty products and to talc. Now Santoor has facewash, talc, soap and fairness cream. 2006 saw a big change in the marketing strategy for Santoor. The campaigns showed Saif Ali Khan (in North) and Madhavan (south) in the TVCs. The TVC's shows these celebrities along with the Mother and child in the usual mistaken identity theme. Many were asking whether the brand is going to appeal to males also. The concept has been used before by Santoor and often enough so that the TVC becomes predictable. The USP of making the user look younger than their years has been employed since 2005, with their Umar Ka Pata Hi Nahi Lagta campaign. While this line has worked for the brand back then, in this hyperaesthetic age, with beauty clinics in every neighbourhood, and

lunchtime botox shots and fillers, this does seem rather gratuitous. The new campaign targets the middle class woman, located in urban India, who is a professional with children and also wants to look her best with minimal fuss. The talking point about Santoor is the positioning. For over the years, the brand has been talking about the concept of For a Younger Looking Skin. All the campaigns were reinforcing that message consistently and powerfully. When the brand moved into talcum powder, it had to deviate from younger looking to freshness. In the case of deo also, the brand is talking about freshness.

Source Factor Model for Santoor: As customers have a notion that the soap (product category) are generally not that suitable for skin so the company (Wipro) tried to harness the benefit by building perception of target audience that it has Turmeric & Sandal as its ingredients but already the target market had its inclination towards other soaps that were harvesting their position that they had built on the basis of ingredients such soaps included Moti, Hamam, Margo, etc. So after market research Wipro & FCB Ulka (the advertising agency, that is associated with the brand Santoor, right from the day 1) realized that only ingredients of the soap wont suffice to have the right kind of notions in the mind of target audience so they changed their course of action to reap out the desired results. They knew that the best way to drive the target audience towards the product is to increase a sense of curiousity that could be achieved by analyzing their behavioral aspect. On analyzing behavioral aspect it was identified such objectives could be achieved by Wipro & FCB Ulka only on the basis of positioning done on the basis of benefits of the ingredients of the soap and this could be generated in the Indian market with the theme of Mistaken Identity as the Indian women are very particular about their skin. This campaign over the period of three decades made Santoor number 1 in south India and number 2 in across India after Lux (HUL) in personal care segment. This campaign helped Santoor distinguish itself from other existing products viz. Margo, Hamam, Lifebuoy, etc. and thus slowly it reached number 3 in across Indian market (as per the case study given) and now it has acquired number 2 position in the Indian market (current status based on market research done by various agencies). Here company identified purchase points of their product (established retailers and local vendors both) and the role that had been played by these purchase points in increasing influence on customers and building the long term brand patronage by them. Thus both the affective and cognitive component has played a great role in influencing the customers as well as organization in order to design its copy source. Since the desire in the Indian women to look young even at matured age, had been identified by the Wipro and FCB Ulka; they began planning their copy source accordingly. Since

both the organization (sponsor/Wipro) and advertising agency were working in close proximity both had its objectives as well as communication plan clear. So for communication they had to identify endorser and they had time and again very cleverly used celebrities and other models as its endorsers. They had used Simon Singh (as the mother and endorser) as she could easily get into the heart and mind of Indian females and help sponsor achieve its target. Saif Ali Khan and R. Madhvan have also been used with particular objective as everyone knew that Madhvan was superhero for south Indians and Saif was popular among north Indians so they used the tactic of region based advertising which was not planned by anyone else in those days (as now-a-days such strategies are being used by Parle for its various products). The advertisement uses a case of mistaken identity to drive home the claim that the soap could make a person look younger. The ad shows a young mother in an aerobics class who is mistaken for a college student. It then moves on to describe the ingredients and the corresponding benefits. The ad struck the required balance between benefits and ingredients to entice new customers while not alienating existing users. The campaign rated highly on reach (both urban and rural), frequency and impact. The focus was on repeats of the ads and not on a star-ambassador to carry the brand. Also, this is a rare example in which the entire brand building exercise was without a sales force, any technological innovations and mega media budgets. In order to authenticate their claim they sponsor (Wipro) used the snapshot of Simon Singh (the endorser) and the girl (the girl who played her daughters role in the advertisement campaign) in the background of wrapper of the soap. The media used was basically electronic media (television) as it was able to serve the purpose of heavy advertisement to generate a brand recall in the mind of target audience. Constant exposure of the target audience to the brand through electronic media, thereafter other channels helped in framing the attitude of the target audience build a positive behavior towards the brand called Santoor, this has resulted in pursuing the target audience to ask for Santoor as a generic name among women when it comes to sandal and turmeric soap. The end resulted has been identified as the target audience are relating and responding to the advertising campaigns over the year. This could be easily analyzed in terms of market share occupied by Santoor in south Indian market (number 1) and across Indian market (number 2 after Lux of HUL). The strategy used for its soap is now also being followed in talc and deo segment with a slight difference at point of focus i.e. focus has shifted from For Young Looking Skin to Freshness.

Recommendations: If Santoor aspire to be an umbrella brand, it may have to dilute or change the core brand positioning of Younger looking skin and include brand value like Freshness. This is relevant for products like Deo and Talc and this seems that Santoor has started doing so. For other products like facewash or creams, the classic positioning will work for the brand. Another factor is that Santoor soap derives its strength from Turmeric and Sandal. The brand even derives the name from these two ingredients. The positioning also derives strength from these two ingredients as well as re-gain the same and thus remain competitive over the period of years. Now when the brand expands its product portfolio, it has to look beyond these two ingredients. Hence if at all the brand wants to expand its horizon, it may have to find other sources of strength. Only then it would be able to metamorphise as a family brand as Vaseline, Lakme & Ponds did it successfully. Along with leveraging the uniqueness of the product it should also strengthen its advertising campaign using social media (as it is being used by Sure deodorant, Axe deodorant, etc.) for marketing and promoting various product categories under the brand name of Santoor. Now since India as a market provides promising opportunity in the personal care segment Santoor wont like to lose out to other players. With the expectation of competition getting tougher over the period of years the company can reap major benefits with minute changes in the product advertising. Development of e-zines/ cyberzines of Santoor as a brand that could be catering to both urban males and females could prove of utmost importance from marketing and advertising perspective. Article marketing as an approach could also be used by Santoor (routing its plan through various newspapers both English and hindi news-daily, magazines as Santoor used to use Grihshobha and Manorma once about 8-10 years back, blogs, etc.) for advertising in which it (Santoor) could highlight all its products in the personal care segment vis--vis the soap category. Santoor needs to develop an advertising campaign with mixture of keeping with the times, humor and understanding the need of the hour of the people. It could develop hoardings as a thing of attraction in India. It can develop a totally integrated brand message, optimize the very brand signal in such a way that the brand becomes instantly recognizable could be one of the advertising approach used by the Santoor.