In this review I have tried to comment on the advertising strategy of Santoor Brand. I have analyzed the parent brand rather than an advertisement in particular.
In the Existing Positioning “Santoor” was positioned as a brand consisting of the age-old benefits of sandal and turmeric. The campaign projected a very traditional picture of the Indian women draped in a saree. The positioning was basically “ingredient based”. It resulted in increase in sales but the figures reached stagnation in a matter of one year. This can be ascribed to the fact that there was really nothing innovative or even different about the positioning and the accompanying tag line. A study of the competition reveals that the competitors in this segment (soap consisting of natural ingredients like sandalwood) adopted more or less a similar message in their communication.
Some tag lines in use were as follows:
Margo - Natural skin care
Chandrika – the real secret of natural beauty and an age-old remedy
Hamam - natural goodness
Mysore sandal – made of natural sandal
Breeze – a natural glow
Modified positioning
The basic underlying issue was to retain the existing users and attracting new users in a stagnating market. A promotional strategy was decided to make the campaign “benefit based”. Santoor in 1989 moved from an ingredients-based positioning in which it faced competition from bigger brands like Hamam, to a benefits-based positioning. This can be attributed to two reasons – the sales was going through a definite lull after the first phase of advertising, with no new users being enticed, and secondly, it was probably wrong to assume that the customers would know the benefits of the ingredients.
This re-positioning came with the risk of losing the existing users who may perceive it as a change of brand. Hence, the strategy was to make it a “Benefit based advertising rooted in the ingredients”.
The creative challenge was to promote the benefit i.e. Santoor makes one look younger with support for the proposition coming from the stress on ingredients viz. sandalwood and turmeric. Another objective of the campaign was to narrow down the broad theme of ‘skin care’ to “younger looking skin”.
Creative execution
The advertisement uses a case of ‘mistaken identity’ to drive home the claim that the soap could make a person look younger. The ad shows a young mother in an aerobics class who is mistaken for a college student. It then moves on to describe the ingredients and the corresponding benefits. The ad struck the required balance between benefits and ingredients to entice new customers while not alienating existing users. The campaign rated highly on reach (both urban and rural), frequency and impact. The focus was on repeats of the ads and not on a star-ambassador to carry the brand.
Also, this is a rare example in which the entire brand building exercise was without a sales force, any technological innovations and mega media budgets. Overall, brand awareness grew because of this campaign and the brand itself is identified with this creative brief. The creative has since then been re-shot in different ways while retaining the same concept. Target Audience Based on its attributes, the Santoor campaign chooses to address two specific target groups.
The “Mistaken Identity” campaign has targeted the young-to-middle-aged housewife segment by proposing a means, which could help in prolonging their youthful beauty. At the same time the campaign has successfully emphasized its enriching ingredients by promoting the goodness of sandal and turmeric thereby retaining the existing users too and focusing on a second group as well; the customers who are conscious about “natural ingredients”. Moreover, in promoting Santoor, the company took a conscious state-oriented strategy. The ingredients, sandal and turmeric have been found to be more popular in the South than in the North. Hence, the campaign was pursued more rigorously in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala. Consequently, the soap went on to achieve a 13 per cent share in AP while its overall market share was only 3 percent.
I have written this review from a marketers point of view. Hope you will like it (and my previous review on Nescafe Ad)