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INCEPTION: The country's first deodorant and complexion soap brand, Cinthol, was launched in August, 1952.
THEN AND NOW: Between 1985-87, the brand started to pick up with advertisements recalled to this day. By featuring the legendary cricketer Imran Khan and actor Vinod Khanna, both at the peak of their careers, in ads, Cinthol established itself as a macho brand well before the advent of a male grooming segment. The brand's Lime variant launched in the eighties got the brand permanently associated with freshness.
Sam Balsara, the CMD of Madison World, who spearheaded the early days of Cinthol recalls, "The objective was to establish a small soap band relative to Lux (HUL) on a much smaller budget. So, we thought of not positioning it as a men's soap but feature male celebrities to make it distinctive and stand out. Those years were characterised by some memorable ads."
By 1993, it boasted of an 18 per cent share of the premium segment of toilet soaps and had been endorsed by actor Shahrukh Khan as well.
But by the mid-90s, things went downhill with a patchy JV with P&G, when Godrej's overall soap share fell to 5 per cent. By the time the JV was called off, Cinthol was being seen as old-fashioned.
In 2008, it was relaunched, with Hrithik Roshan pitching for the soap, on the back of a brand valuation that pointed at its huge recall but meagre market share. By then Nivea, Emami and Garnier had already geared up to enter male grooming. Another relaunch in 2012 marked its diversification beyond soaps and had a youthful messaging.
NAMES BEHIND THE BRAND: Parmeshwar Godrej, the wife of Godrej Group Chairman Adi Godrej, was the driving force behind the brand's early creatives; Sam Balsara helmed the brand's creative and media agency in the 1980s.
REINVENTED?: It is now a Rs 450-crore brand that is present in talcs, shower gels and deodorants, apart from soaps. Whether its current avatar will give it the necessary fillip or not is yet to be seen.
The column, 50&Counting, will chronicle brands which have survived for 50 years and more in India. We decipher their good times and bad times.
