Henkel wants to differentiate its detergent as one that makes clothes germ-free as opposed to just removing stains and whitening.
While the top two players in the detergent market, Hindustan Unilever and Procter & Gamble, slug it out, Henkel, the third multinational corporation in the market, is trying its bit to get ahead, slowly but steadily. It is rallying behind its detergent brand, Henko Stain Champion (Henko), with a new campaign and brand ambassador. Even though Henko has been around since 1994, it does not have a sizeable share. But market share, the company says, has improved since 2009 when Henko was launched with neem — a plant with anti-bacterial properties — as an ingredient. Henkel now wants to differentiate its product based on this trait, as opposed to just stain removal and whitening.
A market of Rs 13,000 crore is at stake. The leader, Hindustan Unilever (market share: 37.5 per cent in the 18 months ended December, 2009), has lost ground, and the second-largest player, Procter & Gamble (16.5 per cent), hasn’t made new inroads either. The other pan-India players are Nirma and Jyothi Laboratories. Henkel says that its value share, which had hovered around 6.3 per cent from January to March, 2010, went up to 6.9 per cent in April 2010, while volume share during the period went up from 7.6 per cent to 8.3 per cent, as computed by Nielsen.
It now wants to press home the advantage. Henkel has roped in actor Irrfan Khan to advocate its product. It has launched three editions of the ad in fictitious supermarkets in Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata. In the ads, as a woman reaches out for her usual detergent in a supermarket, Khan quizzes her about the product’s efficacy. While the detergent might make clothes look clean, does it make them germ-free, he asks. He points her to Henko as the one which does so. Directed by Raja Menon of BandraWest Production, the tagline for the campaign is safayi ka nazariya badlo (change your perception of cleaning). “Mostly people worry about stains or whitening when washing clothes. We want the consumer to re-evaluate if that is all there is,” says DDB India National Creative Director Rajeev Raja who heads the creative team for the ad. One of the ads claims hot water for washing could become redundant if Henko is used. New positioning
In fact, Henko with neem had an earlier campaign running. It depicted scientists talking about the detergent’s role in disinfecting the water in which clothes are washed. The company now is changing tack by focusing on how the same product disinfects clothes. “The new ad is a part of the periodic refreshes of our communication campaign. We felt the need to make the germ-kill properties of Henko more salient, and decided to get it endorsed by a celebrity because we wanted to create more awareness,” says Henkel India Managing Director Jayant Singh. Khan was roped in because of his no-nonsense persona. “We wanted to avoid a pompous tone and be more sincere,” says Raja.
The consumer for detergent is primarily the homemaker — the lady of the house. These are hardnosed buyers and extremely loyal to the brands they use. The campaign thus has to be very convincing. Henko’s positioning could work in its favour, says an analyst. “Henko is not in the mass segment of detergents. So, rather than freebies and discounts, an additional characteristic of the product for the same price could sway the audience,” she explains.
But don’t products like soaps and detergents automatically disinfect? Henkel is claiming as much as 10 times more disinfecting power than other fabric-washes. “We have our research to support these claims,” says Singh. The company launched the product in 2009 after a survey with over 3,000 respondents. It found that 85 per cent of consumers felt that owing to pollution, there was a need to make clothes germ-free, while 95 per cent were wary of skin infections from clothes that had germs even after a wash.
Henkel also has other brands in India in segments such as personal care with a deodorant (Fa), a neem-based soap (Margo) and toothpaste (Neem Active) and homecare products under Pril. Detergents and cleansers form the bulk of its business in India bringing in nearly 66 per cent of its revenue which was Rs 483.45 crore in the year ended December 2009. Detergent wars
The rival brand that ladies in the Henko ads pick up is carefully blurred, the company not wanting to stir up the sort of hornet’s nest that Hindustan Unilever’s ad targeting Procter & Gamble had done earlier this year. In a head-on battle, the two companies not only fought on prices but were also locked in a legal battle. Hindustan Unilever, in an ad for Rin, showed a Tide Natural product pack and drew direct comparisons, claiming superiority.
If Hindustan Unilever launched an aggressive ad, Procter & Gamble upped its manufacturing capacity for Tide from 40,000 tonnes to 140,000 tonnes. The battle for a greater share of the detergent market will make Henko’s growth even more difficult. Not only is there a threat of down-trading (Henko is a mid-segment brand), but competition will intensify too. Jyothi Laboratories, which makes Ujala liquid fabric care, too has launched Ujala washing powder and signed up Sachin Tendulkar as its brand ambassador. Henkel too has a mass market brand called Chet, but that end of the market has larger players such as Rin, Nirma and now, Tide Naturals.
To brace for it, Henko has done a sales reorganisation that will consolidate its strongholds in the southern and north-eastern markets through trade promotions and activations. When it was launched in modern trade, Henko with neem had been accompanied by neem saplings for consumers in the southern markets. Says Singh, “In markets such as Kerala, we enjoy as much as 20 per cent of volume share; we have similar numbers in the north-east.”
Detergent brands have traditionally harped on their ability to remove stains, preserve colours, add brightness to whites and emit fragrance. Henkel itself has been down that path. In 2005, it launched a fragrant version of the product, and in 2007 it claimed Henko had active oxygen which tackled tough stains. Will its latest positioning as a germ killer work?
