Good ol' antiseptic

MARKETING: A quiet comeback "" but was it ever really away?

Talk about desi brands, and Boroline is among the foremost names that come to mind. Most of us have either used it, or heard others extol its many goodnesses.

The rise of the various "Boro" pretenders in the eighties and nineties threatened, for a while, to pull it under, but Boroline continues to be around. Now it is all set to make a quiet comeback.

Boroline was part of the Superbrands India list for 2003-2005, and has been invited by the council to be on its second edition.

"Boroline has grown in the past three years. Last year itself, we had seen a major increase over the previous year," says Debashis Dutta, managing director, G D Pharmaceuticals, the Kolkata-based company that makes Boroline.

Three years ago, Boroline had a 21 per cent market share in the Rs 180 crore antiseptic creams category. It has climbed to 25 per cent today, say market sources.

Its distribution network too has been restructured, and the little green tube is now available in over 7 lakh retail outlets all over India, as against around 3 lakh outlets three years ago.

G D Pharmaceuticals itself is on a high growth trajectory. "The company's turnover was Rs 50.5 crore last year which was a 16 per cent increase over the previous year. Last year was a particularly good year for us. The usual target that we set for ourselves is 10 per cent growth," says Dutta.

This year, the company launched Suthol, a soothing antiseptic liquid. This is the company's third launch in recent times, starting with Eleen, a light hair-oil in 1998, and Penorub, a pain reliever, in 2004.

But Boroline still has a long way to go. There's still a long gap with Boroplus, which leads with a 70 per cent share nationally (with the exception of the east, where Boroline has higher sales). "The problem," says the brand manager of a leading FMCG company, "is that Boroline has only concentrated on wholesale for its sales."

That may have worked earlier. "But relying entirely on wholesale is no way to grow a brand," says Ranjan Das, professor, strategic marketing, Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.

"For that you need an integrated communication strategy backed up by clear segmentation of the product in the market, distribution, above-the-line, below-the-line, choice of distributors."

Not that Boroline's brand communication has remained stagnant. Recently, Boroline was given a new tube and carton design.

Says Dutta, "The basic features of the green tube, the elephant logo and the brand font continue to remain the same. (But) respecting the millions of consumers whose affection and continued support has made Boroline what it is, we do not subject the brand to drastic changes."

Some may dub this conservatism inertia, and perhaps it is. But at a time when the dominant wisdom among FMCG product managers seems to be "push, push, push until it sells", there is at least something to be said about Boroline's old-fashioned reliance on letting its goodness speak for itself.