HLL manages to lather up Lux brand fortunes

Hindustan Lever's attempt to arrest the declining market share for its skincare brand Lux through the 75 years celebration campaign finally seems to be paying off.

Speaking to Business Standard, Ashok Venkatramani, vice president-skin care, Hindustan Lever said,"There has been a huge sales turnaround and we have had near double digit growth in sales after the new campaign."

Analysts too agree the campaign has been successful for the company. "The company has managed to reverse the decline in market through the seriousness with which it went about doing this. The out of the box thinking has resulted in increased sales for the brand," said an FMCG analyst.

Venkatramani says generally, a new campaign takes about three months to impact sales and six-nine months to reflect in market shares, but here it has been a lot quicker.

He admits the key reason for having such large scale celebrations around the brand completing 75 years in India was to strengthen the value proposition of the brand which had been diluted over the years.

"Also newer, smaller players had started eating into the market share which had bottomed out," he said.

The next step in strengthening the brand will be increased rural activation which will happen in March. "We already have a special Rs 5 variant for the rural markets and we will be mounting a big campaign in the rural markets which are very important to us," said Venkatramani.

In addition to this, the company will announce the next part of the 'celebrations' to coincide with their offerings for the summer sometime in April. The company is planning a new product launch as well as a new advertising and media campaign.

It has just introduced a special 'Festive Glow ubtan variant' (sandalwood and turmeric mix) in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra markets and the ad campaign featuring southern actress Shreya would be out soon.

"This is the first time we have such an Indianised product and depending upon the consumer reaction, we would introduce it in other markets as well," said Venkatramani.

He also said the brand would continue to focus on personal wash and cleansing categories and would not be introducing international range of shampoos under the Lux brand in India.