How Horlicks has avoid getting dated

Strong, Stronger, Strongest

Horlicks has learnt to defy age. By successfully launching variants at different points in time, it has strengthened its core brand values,
apart from addressing new consumer needs and thus bringing such consumers into its fold.

Summary: Brands and products tend to age over the years if not nurtured properly. Horlicks has learnt to defy
age. By successfully launching variants at different points in time, it has strengthened its core brand values,
apart from addressing new consumer needs and thus bringing such consumers into its fold. This case study
looks at how Horlicks has avoided getting dated.

Never more has success of a brand in India been so paradoxical than Horlicks from the GlaxoSmithKline Consumer
Healthcare (GSKCH) stable. Conventional management wisdom will tell you to extract as much as you can from a brand
and its variants but to derisk the owner from overdependence on the brand. But Horlicks is a case of repeated success
with brand variants making a virtue of GSKCH's dependence on it. "Horlicks is a very powerful brand associated strongly
with the milk and health space. This is both its strength and its weakness," says marketing consultant Sunil Alagh.

GSKCH's health food drink (HFD) brands - Horlicks, Boost, Maltova and Viva - account for 58.6 per cent by value and 65.1
per cent by volume of a some Rs 5,000-crore market, per date from market researcher Nielsen for 2013. Horlicks and its
variants account for almost half the HFD market by volume. (See Healthy As Ever.) Cadbury India's Bournvita had a share
of 17 per cent and Heinz's Complan, 11 per cent. Now, flip that inwards. The HFD category contributes 77 per cent to
GSKCH's revenues of Rs 3,079 crore for calendar 2012. (Results for 2013 have not been announced yet.)
So, really, how has the company fared in fortifying a brand that is 140 years old? Horlicks was locally manufactured in
India only since 1958, though it had been available via imports since the early 1900s. It was one of the early starters with
aggressive advertising and it pulled in celebrities such as Amitabh Bachchan in the 1970s to endorse its brand over radio.

"But Horlicks remained largely a family drink till the 1990s," says Jayant Singh, Executive Vice President, Marketing,
GSKCH. The company then recognised that there was a specific need for toddlers in the one to three years age group and
launched Junior Horlicks in 1995. It had made a bid for its first brand line-extension with biscuits in 1992, but that hardly
moved the needle for the company. "The market, for various economic and other social conditions, was undergoing several
changes and we saw only single-digit growth in our top line," says Singh.

This was a period of turmoil in the consumer products market, as India, after liberalisation, saw the entry of several new
brands both from domestic and international players. Bournvita and Complan were seen to be strong contenders in west
and northern parts of the country, so was local player Jagatjit Industries with its brand Maltova and Viva in the north.
GSKCH acquired Maltova and Viva and effectively prevented competition from opening a new front.

The above case which is sourced from public information and news is for general classroom study and not intended for public use/ distribution.
It simultaneously invested in consumer research and aggressive brand strategy. "We would visit homes and the company
wanted to listen in to the consumer needs even in the early 1980s,"says Bindu Sethi, Chief Strategy Officer at ad agency
JWT. She has been associated with the brand since then, first as part of market research firm IMRB and then when she
joined HTA (now JWT) in 1988 as a media planner. "It was this consumer voice that found reflection in the repositioning of
Horlicks as a drink targeted at children in 2003, with the 'Epang, Opang, Jhapang' campaign," she says.

This was the tipping point. What appeared to be a natural slot for the brand to slip into, actually followed heated debate
within the company: Horlicks was a family drink until then, the great "family nourisher". All branding and communication
spoke to different family members and how it meant different things to different people, while the new campaign spoke to
children directly. "There were worries that it would disengage a loyal adult base," says Charubala Sheshadri, Marketing
Director, Wellness (OTC) and Oral Health, GSKCH, who joined the company in 2004 as marketing manager for Horlicks.

This campaign, however, was just the precursor. The company has always viewed Horlicks equity as a bank deposit since.
"It has invested at every critical juncture in the brand and its nutrition profile backing it with proof of science," says
Sheshadri. In 2003, it offered its newly formulated Horlicks to the National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) at Hyderabad, which
conducted research to prove its effect on the growth of children. "We clearly identified three key benefit areas to do with
bone health of children, muscle health and their ability to focus better," says Singh. This led to the "Taller, Stronger,
Sharper" campaign.

In this, the company tapped into the growing pester power of children who now were key decision makers not only with
what they ate, but also other key decisions around the household. There was someone else too, pushing for this change.
The company now had a new managing director in Zubair Ahmed in 2007. He inherited a company that had already
accelerated into double-digit growth. By then, the company had speeded up its brand variant launches with Horlicks Lite in
2005, aimed at diabetics and Horlicks NutriBar in 2006 (this launch did not work as planned). "We were already a part of
the morning menu with milk. Now we are growing in our presence with various extensions and adjacents," says Ahmed.

The company found that women were an ignored segment as there was no specific product addressing their specific need.
This led to the launch of Women's Horlicks in 2008, creating a blockbuster product. "It has been growing 60-65 per cent
year on year [even if] on a small base," says Singh. But the effect has been that Horlicks Lite combined with Women's
Horlicks ensured that the company clocked growth of more than 17 per cent in revenues until 2011. Given that competition
was also pumping up volume on the benefit of micronutrients and research-backed offering, in 2012 GSKCH again decided
to challenge itself to deliver further on its by-now older promise of "Taller, Stronger, Sharper". Aided by its R&D centre, it
formulated a blend of Horlicks that was guided by its earlier study done by NIN. The results showed five clear areas of
benefit: more bone area, more muscle, better concentration, more active nutrients, and healthier blood. This led to its
launch of the "5 Signs of Growth" positioning and campaign.

GSKCH had its hiccups with its Horlicks extensions. The 2010 launch of Chill Dood, its flavoured milk range, did not take
off. Nor did its attempt to launch cream biscuits and noodles, under the brand Horlicks Foodles, in 2009. "I think it has
huge potential in the health segment of biscuits with digestive, diabetic, milk, etc. However, in segments like noodles and
snacking where taste is supreme, they will find it difficult to compete with the likes of Nestle and ITC," says Alagh, the
marketing consultant and former managing director of biscuit maker Britannia Industries.

According to Alagh, GSKCH needs to transform brand Horlicks from "purely health, especially aimed at children, to a tasty
but healthy positioning" for all. Therein lies the challenge. Industry insiders say much of the company's success has come
from adjacent brand variants such as Horlicks Junior, Women's Horlicks, Horlicks Lite and Mother's Horlicks and not from
extensions into biscuits, noodles and, even low-priced HFD variants such as Asha.

Latest extensions like Horlicks ProMind and Horlicks Gold are yet to establish themselves conclusively, though they have
shown promising offtake in their test markets in the south. GSKCH thinks successes far outnumber failures. "We are
already the second-largest brand in the south after Quaker Oats," points out Singh. GSKCH is certainly on a fast track.
According to the Ace Equity database, Horlicks and its brand variants have helped the company accelerate its revenues
and profits in the last five years (till December 2012) to 19.2 per cent and 23.4 per cent, respectively, against 13.1 and 20.8
per cent in the preceding five years. Taller, Stronger, Sharper, indeed.

The above case which is sourced from public information and news is for general classroom study and not intended for public use/ distribution.
What Professor Moorthi of IIM Bangalore has to say: The core Horlicks brand is successful. It lays claim to more than half
the white-malted beverages market. Therefore, increasing market share substantially might be difficult. But Horlicks has
been steadily introducing line and brand extensions to keep itself relevant. Generally, when the market share of a brand is
very high, it gets strongly identified with the parent category and, therefore, gets difficult to stretch. This has been seen in
strong brands such as Colgate, Nirma, Ponds and Lifebuoy. (This is the paradox of brand extensions: weak parents are
difficult to stretch; ironically, so are very strong parents.)

So, stretching the Horlicks brand may not be easy. But stretching into categories in the immediate neighbourhood might
be easier than stretching into distant ones. Horlicks may find it easier to stretch into variants (Junior Horlicks, Mother's
Horlicks, etc). Extensions beyond that into categories like biscuits might prove to be more difficult given the brand's
equity. The question even for variants is whether a "kids" brand can be extended to "adults". However, that is still easy to
argue because the extensions are also malted beverages.

What has Horlicks done right? Clearly, the strategy of attacking itself, in core Horlicks territory, before someone else does,
has worked to keep it ahead. Identi-fying, creating and fasttracking sub-segments have ensured that it has left no obvious
gaps for other players to exploit. Full marks here definitely.

What has it not done right? Overextension of the brand - with Noodles and Cereal Bars - into completely unrelated
categories has made it pay, both in terms of wasted effort and long-term dilution of the mother brand. And one really
wonders why, given that the success of Boost and the failure of Chocolate Horlicks (its first attempt to take Horlicks into a
seemingly similar but actually different consumer space) should have taught it a valuable lesson. It has also not been
successful in finding ways to make Horlicks a more mainstream product in the north and west of the country. One can
only presume that these misses were driven by some arrogance and a reluctance to invest and take a hit on profitability.

Source: Business Standard, Economic Times, Company Website, Business Today, Research & Analysis, Public Information

The above case which is sourced from public information and news is for general classroom study and not intended for public use/ distribution.