Oranges and lemon

CAMPAIGN LOGIC/ Liril's new campaign is an attempt to refresh a waning market

As a pretty girl in an orange dress walks into a desert village, followed by some village urchins, a sudden cloudburst drenches them.

The girl and the boys dance in the rain, throwing and catching bars of orange soap. The film ends with the girl tossing a Liril Orange Splash to a villager who had been watching her, while the jingle goes, "Uff, yumma!"

The new television commercial marks a major change from the waterfalls that the Liril ads are best known for. But then, the product isn't the green Liril either.

Last month, Hindustan Lever launched a new variant "" Liril Orange Splash. What's significant about the new offering is that it's also a new attempt by the company to regain market share for Liril.

Consider this. In the Rs 4,000-crore Indian toilet soap market, Liril's share of value has slipped from 3.5 per cent in 2000 to just 2 per cent at present. (Source: ACNielsen ORG-MARG).

"Liril's orange variant is all about taking freshness to another level. The brand was lying low for a long time. And so, it was time the company built some excitement around it.

But instead of directly saying that the soap is about freshness, we showed that the woman using Liril is a never-ending supply of freshness," explains R Balakrishnan (Balki), executive creative director, Lowe India, the agency behind the new campaign.

Clearly, HLL is counting on the orange variant to refresh the market. Agrees HLL Vice President, personal wash, Gopal Vittal, "With Liril Orange, we expect to open up a new segment under freshness. Though the brand has lost market share over the past five years, our focus will lie on growing the brand as a whole rather than variants separately."

The 30-second TV commercial, which was shot in Bikaner, is the second Liril campaign set in a desert. Since the first Liril ad (conceived by marketing legend Shunu Sen) featured a green-bikini-clad girl under a waterfall, the colour green and waterfalls have been a given in all Liril ads.

The first ad set in a desert was made only a couple of years ago for the Liril shower gel, but Liril quickly followed up that break from the past with another one: the campaign for the Icy Cool Mint variant moved from the waterfall to the frozen wastes of Iceland.

Still, there was at least one common factor binding all these different campaigns "" the evergreen Liril theme. This time, though, even that's changed.

According to HLL's Vittal, the changed music was to symbolise a complete reinvention of Liril advertising. But doesn't it create a dissonance in consumers' minds?

Says Balki, "If a particular brand stands for freshness, it also needs to refresh itself. Hence, an all-new ad for Liril." But, he points out, it's not that the refrain has no place in the new communication "" it forms the opening and closing bars of the new jingle.

The new campaign also has print executions, apart from jingles on FM radio. A month-long promotion is also on in collaboration with a coffee chain "" new orange-coloured menus have been printed and three new cold drinks have been introduced as "Liril coolers", named after the soap variants.

Orange seems to be the flavour of the season in the Indian FMCG market: Godrej Consumer Products was the first to take the plunge, launching Cinthol's orange variant called Skin Fresh in 2002; and recently, even dishwashing liquid Pril introduced an orange variant.

Sources at HLL say the company chose orange from five or six fragrance options, based on market research findings. Internationally, too, orange is a popular fragrance, associated with properties like "active" and "fresh".

HLL's earlier attempts to breathe new life into Liril haven't been too successful. In the mid-1990s, it launched variants like Liril Cologne Lime and Liril Active Shower Gel.

Both were soon withdrawn from the market and for some years after that, there was no excitement around the brand. Why? Says Vittal, "I really don't have an answer to that. But now, we are trying to create as much excitement as possible around Liril. It's a very important brand in HLL's soap portfolio."

In 1999, HLL launched yet another Liril variant, Rainfresh, in a blue-coloured pack "" Liril's first extension since its inception to a "non-lime" variant. This was followed by Liril Icy Cool Mint (variant containing menthol) in April 2002.

Rainfresh and two shower gels introduced last year have also been withdrawn, leaving Liril with just three versions at present "" the original Lime, Icy Cool Mint and the newly-introduced Orange Splash.

But why is a brand that created the lime category in the Indian soaps market facing such slippery times? It's not just the entry of new players "" although there are plenty of those.

Cinthol launched its lime variant, Lime Fresh, in the 1980s; Nirma followed soon with Nirma Lime (to counter which HLL introduced Jai Lime) and later Nima Lime. With the entry of these and other brands, the market of lime-based soaps was soaked, washing away Liril's lime hegemony.

But it is telling that apart from Liril, all the other lime soaps are being phased out "" actually, the "freshness" category is declining. The freshness category comprises variants and fragrances like lime, orange and cologne (whatever stands for freshness, in fact).

The major players in this category are HLL, Godrej and the south-based Henkel (Fa). From a 12 per cent share of the total soaps market in 2001, the freshness category at present accounts for just about 5 per cent "" it's the health and hygiene category (brands such as Lifebuoy and Dettol) that's growing at present.

HLL is optimistic that it can go back to owning the freshness platform again with Liril Orange Splash. As Vittal aptly puts it, "Innovation is the key. Liril is a brand that needs innovation almost like oxygen."

The company is planning one innovation on Liril every year, expecting to end the year with 2.5 per cent market share. What remains to be seen is whether the company's efforts will keep Liril from slipping down the waterfall.