Lifebuoy Helps Dettol to become the new market leader
Can you name the market leader soap brand? Indian soap market is a tough fierce battle. And it is one of my favorite questions in the class – Name top five soap brands by volume – and audience never gets it right! It is all about perception. People name brands based on ads and awareness. Interestingly, after some push, three brands get identified but the remaining two still lurk somewhere hidden.
Now, coming back to Lifebuoy – the corona pandemic has caught everyone in a shock. Firms had no clue what to do. In these tough times, Lifebuoy is among the first few brands to use broadcast media for extensive campaign. Lifebuoy took advantage of guidelines of washing hands with soap many a times, and interestingly decided to suggest ‘other brands’ in ads. The ad suggested that users can wash their hands with *any* other brands as well. Later, Lifebuoy, took it to another level. Lifebuoy launched a public service message where they explicitly mentioned the brands – yes – the other four (Dettol, Lux, Santoor, Godrej No. 1) brands as Lifebuoy was the number 1 brand. The campaign got some nice media coverage from people having no clue about basics of marketing.
While we didn’t see similar screen-time by Dettol, but Dettol became number one brand in the recent results of market share. Now, whether Lifebuoy has given its throne on a platter – that we will never know due to absence of relevant data. But we can make an educated guess and safely conclude that Dettol did get some mileage out of the public service campaign of Lifebuoy.
