Look Ma , Fair Hands

Click to edit Master subtitle style Prepared by-: Ayushi Kakwani Priyanka Bhatt Karna Pandya Payal Thakkar Jyoti Sharma Riddhi Patel

7/3/12

Case Summary

Rakesh Kumar Sinha VP of sales and marketing at Godrej has a reason to be happy again Fair glow has been growing at close to 40% Advertising support for the brand has also doubled since last year Within 2 years of its launch in 1999, fair glow has become a RS 100-crore brand
7/3/12

Case Summary

In comparison , fairness creams, which were around RS 550 crore , crossed Rs 800 crore by end -2004 Even in the 4000 crore soaps market , the fairness segment has a 2% minuscule value share Fairglow still has the lions share of the fairness segment, its 60 % share works out to just Rs 48 crore, which is less than half its earning in year two
7/3/12

Case Summary

Competitors research bears out that 78% of women in India aspired to be two shades fairer because they believed it made them more attractive and confident The decision to promote the fairness proposition as a soap made a strategic sense , because in India creams had a penetration of only 25 30 % On other hand soaps enter over 95% of households
7/3/12

Case Summary

In comparison , fairness creams, which were around RS 550 crore , crossed Rs 800 crore by end -2004 Even in the 4000 crore soaps market , the fairness segment has a 2% minuscule value share Fairglow still has the lions share of the fairness segment, its 60 % share works out to just Rs 48 crore, which is less than half its earning in year two
7/3/12

Case Summary

With high expectations from the product , Godrej planned a high visibility launch It palnned surrogate roadblock on television channels (the 40-second television commercial ran simultaneously on all channels within a five to 10 minute time frame to ensure that even the viewers who surf channels during breaks caught a glimpse of the brand) Then the product was advertised on all top rated programmes Kaun Banega Crorepati and Kyunki saas 7/3/12 bhi kabhi bahu thi

Case Summary

But there were a huge credibility issues to be tackled creams stay on all day but soap is washed off Godrej solution was simple: it tailored its commercials to focus on customer testimonials
7/3/12

Case Summary

Even as fair and lovely and fairglow fought it out on TV screens , the sun was eclipsing over the toilet soaps industry Consumer were downgrading to sub-popular category Then in December 2000 a year after launch of fairglow soap, it committed a vital strategic mistake , it extended fairglow into creams with the proposition , Bedaag gorapan
7/3/12

Case Summary

Importantly for Godrej , it lost the high ground of innovation that it had made its USP Even as Fairglows brand extension backfired , HLL engaged in battle on another flank- it launched Fair & lovely soap
7/3/12

Case Summary

Fair glow on the other hand money back challenge to in build credibility in 2002 By mid 2004 fair glow discontinued with its fairness cream In late 2004 it again started to promote the efficacy of its soap This resulted in paying off dividends and increase in sales
7/3/12

7/3/12

Questions
1.

What is the positioning of Fairglow soap ? why is the positioning likely to appeal to Indian Customers ? Positioning means the process by which marketers try to create an image or identity in the minds of their target market for its product, brand, or organization

Answer :
.

Fairglow offered fairness through soap, which was more convenient to use at no 7/3/12 extra cost, moreover soaps enter over 95%

Contd..

It undertook demographic segmentation with preference to variables like gender, income and nationality It also undertook behavioral segmentation because in case of fairglow marketer divided buyers into groups on the basis of their attitude towards , use of and response toward the product 7/3/12

Questions
2.
Why was the extension of Fairglow to face cream a bad decision ? Answer :

Brand extension or brand stretching is a marketing strategy in which a firm marketing a product with a well-developed image uses the same brand name in a different product category. The new product is called a spinof f

7/3/12 Fairglows

extension to face cream was not a

Contd..

Initially when fair glow launched its fairness soap , it lacked credibility among masses -creams stay on all day but soap is washed off Godrej by using customer testimonies and extensive advertising convinced the 7/3/12 market to accept its fairness

Contd

This was a bad decision because it challenged its own product standing in the market and the faith that it had instilled that soaps can be as ef fective as fair ness creams

Besides this brand extension was too soon to be undertaken (1 yr), before the soap could capitalize its entire market share , launch of fairness cream cannibalized it
7/3/12

7/3/12