GilletteLabs : Shaving Made Sensational

 Brand : Gillettelabs

Company : P&G

Brand Analysis Count: #624

Gillette has launched a new brand - GilletteLabs in India this year (2024). The new brand is from the R&D wing of Gillette from which the brand shares the name. The new launch also reinforces the innovation culture of the company and the effort it takes to bring new ideas to an otherwise dull product like a shaving razor. 

GilletteLabs is touted as the most technologically advanced shaving razor with FlexDisc technology which, the brand claims, will give the best shave ever. I should say that the brand has put in lot of thinking behind the product features. The brand comes with a metallic handle and a magnetic stand for holding the razor handle. The handle also has a FlexDisc which ensures maximum skin contact. The most important marketing bait is the lifetime warranty for the handle. The brand says it is the first to offer such a warranty - with of course lot of conditions such as it defines lifetime as 10 years. 

The razor blade comes with an exfoliating bar which the brand claims removes dirt before the blade passes through the skin- so much for a plain razor blade isn't it. 

All these don't come cheap. The shaving kit ( one razor and handle) costs around Rs 1400. And we know that Gillette makes money not from the shaving handle but from the subsequent razor purchases. The GilletteLabs razor costs around Rs 750 for all the bells and whistles. 

I wonder why Gillette chose the brand name "GilletteLabs" for a product rather than the likes of Mach or Fusion. In my opinion, the company could have used Gillette Labs as an umbrella brand and used a separate brand name for the product. 

One should appreciate the focus of the company in constantly innovating in this category even though many things are marketing elements, the brand has been able to give great products to the customers and cement the leadership position of the brand in this segment.  These launches make it difficult for challenger brands to build brand equity big enough to challenge Gillette and the premium it commands. 

Ariel Detergent : Firing All Cylinders

Brand: Ariel

Company: P&G

Brand Analysis Count: #603 

The Indian detergent market worth over Rs 29000 crore is a fiercely competitive market with a whole lot of organized and unorganized players, global and local players vying for a pie of the market.HUL commands the detergent market with around 39% share with its power brands like Surf, Rin, Wheel, Sunlight etc. 

P&G has been fighting the market leader with Ariel and Tide pitching these brands against Surf and Rin respectively. Ariel is a global brand which has a history dating back to 1967. The brand came to India in 1991 and ever since, the brand has been fighting Surf head-on. 

Ariel has always positioned itself as a stain-fighting detergent, thus directly challenging Surf. In the marketing journey, it had used all possible strategies in challenging the market leader. While Surf although a premium-priced detergent tried to appeal to the value, Ariel steadfastly focused on performance in terms of stain-removing. For this, Ariel launched a series of product enhancements and form variants.

In the promotion front, the brand used every trick in the book. While Surf moved from value-based pitching to an emotional " Dirt is Good" theme, Ariel focused on the logic of stain removal. The brand is using the celebrity chef Sanjeev Kapoor in the last two to three years in their campaigns. The theme is revolving around food-stains which are toughest and in a sort of challenge format shows that Ariel cleans the stains better. 

Last year, the brand also used Bollywood actor Anil Kapoor in their campaign again highlighting the brand's core promise. 

Not to be left behind in the emotional positioning, Ariel in 2016 launched a campaign Share The Load with the hashtag #sharetheload. The theme focused on the fact that women in households are often deprived of basic necessities of life such as sleep because they are forced to take an entire load of managing the households. Hence Ariel decided to be their voice and launched a campaign asking everyone in the house especially men to share the load. The campaign was there for one year and then stopped. In 2020, the campaign was again restarted and was well received by the audiences. The campaign is nicely done and is relevant to the brand since it is talking for its customer- the women of the household. 

In 2020, the brand also came out with product innovation - The Pod. Pod is a unique detergent capsule where there are three components of detergent packed using a thin film. One is a stain-remover, another detergent and a whitening element. This capsule has to be put into the washing machine along with the clothes and the capsule breaks to release the detergents. 

The USP of this pack is the convenience and more than that this product also showcases the brand's focus and innovative character. As a consumer, there is a novelty value and added convenience but how it fits the laundry budget is something debatable. 

Despite all these efforts, Surf still rules the premium laundry segment. Ariel should be credited with a single-minded focus and consistent positioning and also its ability to come out with new product innovations. The brand has remained premium over its competitors and resisted a price war with the competitors. It is patient and focused and I think the brand is letting customers patronize the brand based on the merit than anything else.

Brand Update : Tide gets Ayushmann Khurrana as the brand ambassador

 P&G's detergent brand has now a brand ambassador- Ayushmann Khurrana. The brand which is pitching for the leadership position in the detergent category is fighting the whiteness battle with Unilever's Rin. Tide cleverly uses " Surprising Whiteness" as the theme while Rin uses the lightening mnemonic to reinforce the brand's promise. 

The new campaign featuring Ayushmann Khuranna follows the time-tested theme. The interesting part is that the brand ambassador plays all the character in the ad including that of the lady. According to reports, Ayushmann is now the hot pick for brands in Bollywood as he has delivered back to back hits and has a next-door person image and is relatable. Around 7 years ago, Rin had roped in none other than Amitabh Bachchan as the brand ambassador. 

With washing machines getting into many homes, detergent brands have launched their own variants for machine use. The current campaign is for Tide Ultra variant which is for the machine wash segment. 

Related Post

Tide Vs Rin 

Brand Update : Thru a horrible campaign,Old Spice asks you to be Mantastic

In my marketing communications class, I used to show the globally famous " The man, your man could smell like" campaign featuring the Old Spice man Isaiah Mustafa ( watch here) as an example of a highly successful marketing campaign in 2010. Three years after, in 2013, P&G started showing that advertisement in the Indian market. The disconnect had started.

To my surprise, the brand owner decided to adapt the globally successful campaign to Indian market with Milind Soman taking the place of Isaiah Mustafa. And the outcome was hopeless.

Watch the ad here : Old Spice India ad 1
                               Old Spice India ad 2

I would say that Old Spice has done a horrible job in adapting a global campaign. I am not sure what the agency had in mind when they conceived this campaign ? While the original global ad had a strategy behind it, the Indian brand failed miserably in making any sense and  succeeded killing the brand's whatever image that is left in the Indian consumer's mind. 

There is total confusion in what the brand is aiming to convey and to whom ? While the Old Spice man from original campaign talked to the ladies with his famous " Hello Ladies " opening, the Old Spice Indian man doesn't know what he is talking about and to whom ?  And sadly at the end of it, the brand talks about " attraction " thus falling into the  same language that other brands are talking about. 

When a brand adapts a globally successful campaign, its inevitable that people will compare and its brand and agencies duty to do justice to the original creative. Here in my opinion, the brand fell flat in the adaptation. The ads are neither attractive nor share-able and is desperately trying to be funny which is sad. The new tagline Smell Mantastic is as horrible as the campaign itself. 

 The new campaign had virtually killed the earlier brand image of Old Spice. But instead of creating a new image, this adaptation had put a confused picture of the brand interms of the image. While the 2010 global campaign put Old Spice in a leading position in western market because the ad theme and message connected with the consumer. But thats not the case here. The adapted campaign neither connects nor conveys any message or makes sense. Hope in the subsequent ads, the creatives will do justice to the brand.

What a horrible waste of a good brand !