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Sunsilk is a hair care brand, primarily aimed at women, Produced by the Uniliver group, It is now considered the world's leading company in hair conditioning and the second largest in shampooSunsilk is Unilever’s leading hair care brand, and ranks as one of the Anglo-Dutch conglomerate's “billion dollar brands“ Sunsilk shampoos, conditioners and other hair care products are sold in 69 countries worldwide.

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There was rising competition in shampoo market.

International brands entering into the market.

Lack in attracting the Target Group (youth).

Traditional way of advertising. Loosing the Target Group. Low Brand recognition.

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• Towards the end of 2002 Sunsilk, which was then sponsoring the Miss India pageant, decided to establish an online presence for the endeavour.• The success of this activity spawned the idea of developing a portal for young girls and soon thereafter the Sunsilk Naturals came into being.

• This in turn successfully resonated with the target audience paving the way for an exclusive all-girl community that is today widely recognized as Gang Of Girls.

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Leveraging on the fact that sunsilk did have an existing site www.sunsilknaturals.com, it became a tad easier for sunsilk to target its potential consumers

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Engage the end user directly and in an interesting manner: girls in the target group of 18-25 yrs

Provide an interactive platform for users to have lot of fun

Present the user with a variety of activities to choose from

Use it as an image building platform

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Earlier attitude : Sunsilk provides hair care products.

To change this attitude Sunsilk came up with many new concepts to allow consumer to link themselves with the product.

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Considering customer as an individual. Different product for different hair type : each customer has his own requirement.

And to promote this and much more HUL came up with

Website: gangofgirls

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Fashion, job hunting, gossip, emotional bonding etc.. HUL Strategy : A website is a key element of building

brands not only (obviously) for Online Businesses but also Offline Businesses. A staggering 9 out of 10 times, majority of consumers are bound to be internet savvy.

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GoG Allowed it’s TG to try all the above things and even more via internet

Customer internet product

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GoG allowed TG to interact with each other (formation of GANG on website) + hair care tips + games + etc.. allowed TG to relate themselves to the product.

Resulting in brand loyalty.

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Sunsilk came up with a range of hair care products. Like: launch of conditioners were easy to achieve because : had already established it’s market via Sunsilk Shampoos.

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Own belief

Intention

Normative belief(peer group)

Behavior

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•Sunsilk gang of girls is an exclusive online community for like minded girls

•It is built on the philosophy that girls love to gang together to express what they feel.

•Place for young urban women to come and say what they mean

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•It is founded on three pillars and has been operating on these since its inception

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• GOG TV enables girls to upload and share their videos•It has features like the moviemaker create her own movie by using pre-shot movie clips• It also features the slideshow maker; where a user can upload pictures and give it various transitions along with background music• Get Spotted is yet another platform for girls to showcase their talents in performance art, writing etc. and win prizes based on how other users rate their talents•Furthermore, the Life Can’t Wait tools give users a unique and creative space wherein they can express to other users their life’s defining moments as well as their goals and dreams• The Be A DJ feature in the Rhythm Lounge allows users to express themselves musically – they can create their own music mixes by mixing and matching pre-recorded instrumental tracks.

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• Girl Talk is one of the most active sections of the website

• It is a forum that gives girls the space to discuss everything from hair & fashion to the latest in entertainment

• Ask the girls is a special feature introduced with the understanding that girls often have questions that only other like-minded girls can answer •The site therefore has given its users the space to ask around

• The website in association with MSN India has also introduced its very own mail and chat service available exclusively to girls on the website.

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o The site is a rich reservoir of articles on hair styling, hair care, fashion trends, beauty secrets, relationships and more.

o Additionally, the website features blogs by female celebrities giving users insight into the lives and minds of their idols.

o The site is well equipped with the latest entertainment updates presented by MSN India.

o The website in association with Astro Life presents users their daily horoscope along with other astrological insights.

o An association with Monster Jobs allows the site to present users with hot career opportunities for them to explore. 23

•The success of Sunsilk Gang Of Girls, over the years, has given way to the launch of Gang Of Girls websites for each of a number of countries in South and South-East Asia.

Other Media Used

•Towards the end of 2007 Sunsilk Gang Of Girls introduced a viral spoofing the then popular film ‘Chak De India’

• The viral appropriately named ‘Choke There’ features a disgraced & beleaguered hockey coach in search of his dream hockey team

•Some of the hilarious spoofs featured in the viral include Shah Rukh, Himmesh, Mithun, Sholay’s Thakur and more.

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Psychological Personal Social Cultural

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Psychological Factors Personal Factors

Motivation Perception Learning Beliefs and

Attitudes

Family Life Cycle Occupation and

Economic circumstances

Lifestyle Personality and self

- concept

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Social Factors Cultural Factors

Reference Group Family Roles and Status

Culture Sub - culture Social Class

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•Reference groups refer to relevant groups to which consumers compare themselves and base purchasing decisions on. Reference groups can be broken down into three categories :

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•Sunsilk was able to utilize all three categories of reference groups to stimulate demand, as follows:•Sunsilk recruited Bollywood actress and former Miss World Priyanka Chopra as its brand ambassador.

•Indian women admire Priyanka giving her significant persuasive power

•Additionally, Sunsilk launched sunsilknaturals.com and showcased its Miss India Pageant show, with participants in the pageant show representing aspirational reference groups.

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•Female consumers in India play a dominant role in the buying decision process and form the axle of the Indian household purchase system

•Sunsilk recognized that these young women could influence and promote the Sunsilk brand to each other;

•Sunsilk just had to facilitate this

•To get this group of women together, Sunsilk launched Sunsilgangofgirls.com and provided services such as the Makeover Machine, Astrological forecasts, expert advice, Gang of Girls TV, forums, and other interactive elements.

•Once these services attracted a large base of users, these users started discussing amongst themselves sharing advice and deepening their relationships with the brand.

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•With 761,674 members all discussing beauty and hair care, not having healthy hair or style puts you in a dissociative category.

•If a women joins the site, she is almost obligated to maintain her style and hair or risk being part of the dissociative group that doesn’t take these things seriously on a daily basis.

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•Liaisons connect two or more cliques together without belonging to either clique.  •Sunsilk used celebrities and hair care and beauty experts as liaison opinion leaders. Priyanka Chopra, former Miss World, anchored the website Dipannita Sharma, a renowned fashion model; Pearl, a DJ; Mehnaz, a vocalist; Sweta Subramaniam, a Bharatnatyam dancer were all used as liaison opinion leaders to connect groups and influence buying decisions.

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Bridges are opinion leaders that belong to one clique and connect that group with another clique.

Active members on the Sunsilk Gang of Girls website represent bridges, connecting multiple separate cliques into one large group that can share information and deepen their relationship with the brand together.

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Postpurchase Behavior

Postpurchase Behavior

PurchasePurchase

Evaluation of AlternativesEvaluation

of Alternatives

Information SearchInformation Search

Need RecognitionNeed Recognition

Cultural, Social, Cultural, Social, Individual and Individual and Psychological Psychological

Factors Factors affect affect

all stepsall steps

Cultural, Social, Cultural, Social, Individual and Individual and Psychological Psychological

Factors Factors affect affect

all stepsall steps

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IN SYNC WITH THE CHANGING CONSUMER BEHAVIOURNew media channels due to change in media consumption behaviour of the TG

Increase in disposable income among Indian youth

Youth are spending lesser time with traditional media like TV and newspaper and more time on internet , mobile phone etc.

Youth are sceptical about advertising and marketing gimmick and so rely more on the views shared among their network of friends with whom they keep in touch online

Women are also making their presence felt on the internet

Thus, the changing scenario provided marketers with the opportunity to join in the conversation and start two way communication with consumers

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The effectiveness to which Sunsilk utilized reference groups is demonstrated by the fact that within 6 months of its launch, the website attracted more than 500,000 users and increased sales by 9.2%

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Exceptional ratings for a websites No. of hits : 200 million Nos. of registration : 280,000 No. of gangs : 26,000 Time spent on the site : 14 mins Recognition Enquiry from Star groups on acquisition Google & Travelguru sought alliance

Link on Orkut site Competitor imitation

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 In November 2006, Economic Times reported that the site had generated 200 million hits and got on an average 12-13 million page views per month.

Within 36 days of its launch, GoG had 100,000 registered members.

Though the 'Desperate Guys' section was intended to restrict the entry of males, within one month of its launch the membership in this section was up to 4,000.

By November 2006, GoG had 250,000 registrations and 25,000 gangs.

By January 2007, the registration base reached 350,000, with 26,000 registered gangs.

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Results:HLL had been suitably rewarded for among the first Indian companies to take the risk of harnessing an online community to promote its brand.With the growth in the number of entertainment options, a large portion of the youth had moved away from traditional channels and hence marketers had to woo them in new ways.The increase in disposable income among the Indian youth was also a key consideration.•Total Registration – 7,16,621    •Average Monthly Page Views – 30,00,000 •Average Monthly Hits – 1,20,00,000 •Average Monthly Unique Visitors – 97,086 •Total Number of Gangs – 42,586 •Average Visit Length – 11.06 minutes 41

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