Soaps have been the biggest growth driver for the 76-year old brand
When Chander Mohan Sethi announced last Friday that Dettol, the 76-year old iconic brand from Reckitt Benckiser, is well on its way to achieving a turnover of Rs 1,000 crore much before the year-end, no one was surprised. For, the brand has been clocking a double-digit growth even at a time when most others, including market leader Hindustan Unilever, have been losing market share.
The brand’s revenues were pegged at Rs 900 crore in July 2009, according to A C Nielsen data. So the Rs 1,000 crore milestone will be achieved anytime now, says Sethi, Reckitt’s chairman and managing director (India) and regional director (South Asia).
Dettol has been able to command a premium because of the consumers’ preference for a brand that has never deviated from its health platform, says Arvind Singhal, chairman, Technopak Advisors.
Others agree and attribute multiple reasons for Dettol’s growth – consistent positioning, stable pricing, careful brand extensions and smaller packs. “It is amazing to see how brand Dettol has been built over the last so many years with a message that is relevant even today. They have almost become a generic category in health,” says Singhal.
The packaging of all its products is distinct in their own way. The green and white colours and the sword have become symbols for fighting germs and infections, reinforcing the brand’s positioning as a bodyguard which protects people from the unhygienic world outside.
Dettol has successfully extended germ protection -- the USP of its flagship product, the antiseptic liquid -- to soaps, hand washes and shaving cream, too. “It has been able to guard the brand message and not let the brand occupy any other position in the consumer's mind,” points out Singhal. Other brands, he feels, have tried to jump on to the bandwagon of health, but have had shorter lives because of the lack of such a focus.
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Soaps, launched in 1981, have been the biggest growth driver accounting for around 75 per cent of the total revenue. Soaps have seen a growth of 100-basis points in less than a year (from a market share of 6.5 per cent, it has inched up to 7.7 per cent) in a Rs 7,500 crore market that is growing 8 to 9 per cent in value and 2 to 3 per cent in volumes. It also helped that the two market leaders from HUL's stables – Lifebuoy and Lux – have been steadily losing market share over the last year, according to AC Nielsen's April-May, 2009 report.
Up next could be herbal soaps from Dettol, which it is testing in Tamil Nadu. Its range of body washes, which is presently retailed through modern trade and large format stores, could also undergo a rejig and launched on a larger scale.
The health platform has worked in other brand extensions as well. For example, liquid hand wash. Despite retailing at a higher price than competitors such as Fem and Lifebuoy, Dettol has maintained a lead in this segment with a 60 per cent market share in the Rs 100 crore market.
In shaving cream, it has 30 per cent share in a Rs 200 crore market. Meanwhile, its original product, Dettol liquid antiseptics, is logging 20 per cent growth in a Rs 150-crore market. The brand is the leader (85 per cent share) with its nearest competitor, Johnson & Johnson's Savlon, not being able to make much headway.
Not all brands balancing on the healthy plank have managed to get such success. Lifebuoy, also aligned with the hygiene and germ relief promise, trails behind Dettol in the liquid hand wash category. “Unlike many brands, which at some point in their life cycles, have become less contemporary, Dettol has remained fresh through packaging changes and communication,” points out Singhal.
According to TAM data, Dettol’s brand communication had 60 per cent share of voice (percentage of Gross Rating Points generated by the category) over the last seven months, 100 per cent in liquid antiseptics and 13-14 per cent in soaps. Its communication has been carefully different for urban, semi-urban and rural. Sethi wants to do more and is planning to increase advertising spends by 30 per cent.
The biggest challenge has been low consumer awareness on hygiene, prompting Dettol to take the education route. So one-fifth of the ad spends go into non-mass media in smaller towns like wall-painting, dealer boards and vans with products and awareness literature. Dettol's communication has involved taking the message of preventing diseases through maintaining hygiene to the grassroots. It visits schools, hospitals, housing societies and takes the help of doctors to tell audiences the basics of hygiene. The brand is also endorsed by the Indian Medical Association.
“We have reached over a million new mothers through our Surakshit Parivar programme,” says Sethi. The programme educated them about hygiene issues and handed them kits with Dettol products. Besides the rural programmes, “smaller pack sizes have also seen distribution shoot up by 25 per cent and volume sales by 35 per cent in markets such as Bihar, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh,” says Sethi.