HINDUSTAN LEVER LIMITED

INTRODUCTION

HINDUSTAN LEVER LIMITED (HLL) is India's largest fast moving consumer goods company, with leadership in Home & Personal Care Products and Foods & Beverages. HLL's brands, spread across 20 distinct consumer categories, touch the lives of two out of three Indians. They endow the company with a scale of combined volumes of about 4 million tonnes and sales of Rs.10, 000 crores.The leading business magazine, Forbes Global, has rated HLL as the best consumer household products company. Far Eastern Economic Review has rated HLL as India’s most respected company. Asiamoney has rated HLL as one of India’s best managed companies. Leading national publications, like The Economic Times, Business World, and Business Today have also rated HLL as one of India’s most respected companies and the number one in Market Value Added and EVA.

The vision that inspires HLL's 32,400 employees (40,000 including Group Companies), including about 1,425 managers, is to “meet everyday needs of people everywhere - to anticipate the aspirations of our consumers and customers and to respond creatively and competitively with branded products and services which raise the quality of life.”

This objective is achieved through the brands that the company markets.It is an ethos HLL shares with its parent company, Unilever, which holds 51.55% of the equity. A Fortune 500 transnational, Unilever sells Foods and Home and Personal Care brands through 300 subsidiary companies in about 100 countries worldwide with products on sale in a further 50.

BUSINESS NATURE

HLL is India's largest marketer of Soaps, Detergents and Home Care products. It has the country’s largest Personal Products business, leading in Shampoos, Skin Care Products, Colour Cosmetics, and Deodorants. HLL is also the market leader in Tea, Processed Coffee, branded Wheat Flour, Tomato Products, Ice cream, Soups, Jams and Squashes. HLL is also one of the country's biggest exporters and has been recognised as a Golden Super Star Trading House by the Government of India; it is a net foreign exchange earner. HLL is India's

Largest exporter of branded fast moving consumer goods. The company's Exports portfolio includes HLL's brands of Soaps and Detergents, Personal Products, Home Care Products, Tea and Coffee. HLL is also driving exports in chosen areas where India has a competitive advantage – Marine Products, Basmati Rice, Castor Oil and its Derivatives.

It is India's largest exporter of Marine Products, and one of the largest global players in castor.

MARKET LEADING BRANDS

HLL’s brands have become household names. The company’s strategy is to concentrate its resources on 30 national power brands, and 10 other brands which are strong in certain regions. The top five brands together account for sales of over Rs.3000 crores. Each of these mega brands has a potential scale of Rs.1000 crores in the foreseeable future.

Some of the big brands in Soaps and Detergents are Lifebuoy, Lux, Liril, Hamam, Breeze, Dove, (all soaps) surf excel,surf , Rin, Wheel (the number one detergent brand in India, and HLL's largest), 501, Sunlight (all detergents). HLL also markets the Vim and Domex range of Home Care Products. In the Personal Products business, HLL's Hair Care franchises are Clinic, Sunsilk and Lux shampoos; the company markets Nihar oil. In Oral Care, the portfolio comprises Close-up and Pepsodent toothpastes and toothbrushes. In Skin Care, HLL markets Fair & Lovely Skin Cream and Lotion, the largest selling Skin Care Product in India; a brand developed in India, it is now exported to over 30 countries. It has been extended as an Ayurvedic cream, an under-eye cream, a soap and a talc, in line with the strategy to take brands across relevant categories. The other major Skin Care Franchises are Pond’s, Vaseline, Lakme and Pears. In Colour Cosmetics, HLL markets the Lakme and Elle-18 ranges. In Deodorants, the key brands are Rexona, Axe, Denim and Pond's, while the Talc brands are Pond's, Liril, Fair & Lovely, Vaseline and Lifebuoy. Axe and Denim are HLL’s franchises for Men’s toiletries.

HLL has recently launched Lever Ayush Ayurvedic Health & Personal Care Products. Health Care is among the new businesses HLL has chosen to enter. The product range comprises Cough Naashak Syrup, Headache Naashak Roll-on, Dandruff Naashak Shampoo, Hair Rakshak Oil and Body Rakshak Soap. The purity of the Ayurvedic ingredients in Lever Ayush is endorsed by the renowned Arya Vaidya Pharmacy (AVP) of Coimbatore.

PRODUCT & QUALITY STRATEGIES: It is for the first time that rigorous Testing procedures of the pharmaceutical industry have been applied to Ayurvedic products. That is why the brand seal is ‘Truth of Ayurveda; Proof of Science’.HLL has started franchised Lakme Beauty Salons, offering standardised services, in line with the strategy to add a service dimension to relevant brands.HLL and Pepsi have formed an alliance to distribute a full range of tea and coffee and soft beverages through vending machines; HLL already has a base of around 15000 such machines. The coffee business comprises Bru Instant Coffee and Deluxe Green Label Roast & GroundCoffee.The Kissan and Knorr Foods range comprises Spreads & Jams, Biscuit Sticks, Soups, Squashes, Tomato Ketchup, Sauces, Puree, and Cooking Aids. Popular Foods, lFlour Iodized Edible Salt, under the Knorr Annapurna brand name, have met with remarkable success.

THE AXE EFFECT

INTRODUCTION

axe, or lynx is a brand of male grooming products, owned by Anglo-Dutch company Unilever who manufacture a range of products in the health & beauty, household cleaning, food and ice cream categories.Axe's lead product is a deodoran body spray. The brand also includes deodorant sticks, roll-ons, anti-perspirants, aftershaves and shower gels. In most of the world the brand is named axe; in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and the United Kingdom it is named lynx due to conflicts regarding the trademark.

• AXE Deodorant-1999• Tagline “The Axe Effect”• Portrayed as a ‘weapon of seduction’• Five Fragrance: Dimension, Java, Phoenix, Pulse and Voodoo

Axe, the deodorant that is considered cool, fashionable and stylish by young men was launched in India in 1999. Available in more than 60 countries around the world, it is a world leader in male toiletries.

Axe has a mix that is completely harmonised globally – from its proposition and communication to the product, as available on the shelf.Axe is available in five fragrances: Java, Pulse, Dimension, Voodoo and Phoenix. Axe has become the leading male deodorant brand in India within just one year of its launch.Consumers associate a lifestyle of cool clubs, cool music and cool fashion with Axe. The youth view it as an icon which introduces many 'firsts' to their world of music and dance – like the first "World's Longest Dance Party" and the first ever 'Axe Voodoo Island Party'

Axe, a brand marketed by M/S. Hindustan Unilever Ltd. (HUL) in India, holds the market leader position in the nascent Indian deodorant industry. Though general information regarding market, image positioning etc. will cater to the complete Axe line of deodorants, product specifics will be restricted to the bodyspray segment alone.

The report starts with an overview of the Indian market for Deodorants over the last 4-5 years, with relevant supporting quantitative information. The overview also projects market performance and potential for the next 5-6 years.

We then identify the multiple segments that make up this market for deodorants using relevant criteria that will involve the demographic, psychographic and behavioural characteristics of the consumers. Segmentation will yield us a plethora of segment combinations. Among these segments, we will analyse only those in which Axe is active because of the best opportunities available. These are called ‘Target Segments’ and the process is called Targeting. Specific reasons for the targeting become clearer once we appreciate the image that Axe carries and the specific value proposition it conveys to its target consumer, or, in other words the brand Positioning for Axe. Thus, the STP (Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning) model described above helps us comprehend the marketing process for Axe at a much more granular level.

In the background of the observed target market scenario for Axe, we start with the analysis of the offering by analysing each of the following solution entities:Ø The Product OfferingØ PriceØ Place Ø Promotions UsedThe above model, also popularly known as the 4Ps approach, is used to analyse the marketing tools that HUL uses for influencing consumer-buying behaviour.

PackagingPackaging involves designing and producing the container or wrapper for a product. The package may include the product's primary container a secondary package that is thrown away when the product is about to be used and the shipping package necessary to store, identify, and ship the product The axe deodorant contain in stylish bottle .its the primary container of the axe, there is no secondary package for the axe deodorant.

Growing Use of packaging as marketing tool;

1. Self service2. Consumer affluence: consumer are now willing to pay a little more for

convenience, appearance and prestige of better packages.3. Company & Brand Image: Instant Recognition4. Innovation Opportunity

Labeling

printed information appearing on or with the package, is also part of packaging. On the bottle of the axe there is really stylish printing ,stylish cap.written all the information about the axe deodorant.there net volume, price, manufacture date and there variant PRODUCT MIX AND LINE

A product mix (also called product assortment) is the set of all products and items that a particular seller offers.A product mix consists of various product lines.A product line is a group of products that are closely related, because they function in a similar manner, are sold to the same customer groups, are marketed through the same types of outlets, or fall within given price ranges.

Width – Number of different product lines offeredLength – Number of products offered within a particular product line.Product Line Depth – Number of versions offered of each product in the line.Consistency – how closely related the various product lines are in end use, production requirement, distribution channel.

productsDeodorant Bodyspray

Invisible Solid Antiperspirant & Deodorant 

Shower Gel

 

In the following fragrances:

- Touch

- Essence

- Tsunami

- Phoenix

- Voodoo

- Orion

- Kilo

- Apollo

 Deodorant spray

 Shower gel

 Deodorant gel

AXE DEODORANT

Axe is available in five fragrances: Java, Pulse, Dimension, Voodoo and Phoenix

From its launch, the yearly fragrance variant of Axe has played a key part in the success of the brand, by offering something new each year. The type of fragrance variants have evolved over time. From 1983 until about 1989, the variant names were descriptions of the odor of the fragrance inside and included Musk, Spice, Amber, Marine and Oriental.From 1990 until 1996 geographic names were used such as Africa, Alaska, Java, Nevada and Inca. From 1996 to 2002 Axe took inspiration from Calvin Klein fragrances (also owned by Unilever at that time), using the same perfumer, Anne Gottlieb, to develop the fragrances to launch variants such as Dimension, Apollo, Voodoo, Gravity and Phoenix.From 2003 Axe variants showed clever ways they helped men get women. In 2003 the Pulse fragrance showed how it gave geeky men the confidence to dance to get women. This was followed by Touch, Unlimited, Clix and in 2007 Vice was marketed on a theme of making "nice" women become "naughty".In 2008 a different direction was taken when a chocolate scented body spray, Dark Temptation, was released.

Gallery of Commonwealth variants

Lynx Click (new

style)

Lynx Unlimited (new

style)

Lynx Vice (new style) Lynx Touch (new

style)

Lynx Africa (new

style)

Lynx Pulse (new style) AXE Recover (Limited

Edition)AXE Dark

Temptation

PRICING

The price of all the variants of axe are same. the all axe are in the same range, they just have different fragrance and flavour

AXE DARK TEMPTATION – Rs. 150, net contain 150ml/96g AXE RECOVER- Rs.-150, net contain 150ml/96gAXE AFRICA-Rs-150, net contain 150ml/96g

All product categories are behaving similarly OR are there any differences?– Increasing competition and– Dominance of few companiesIf there are differences, then are there any specific movements that can be observed in the product mix of these categories?

Line pruning - There is a tendency for product lines to lengthen over time. Hence a review must be carried out regularly.

Line modernization – Modernizing all products in the line

Line featuring – Selecting a few items from the line and promoting them aggressively to attract attention to the total line

Product feature Axe Deodorant Body Spray For Men is a unique all-over bodyspray that combines a seductive fragrance with effective deodorant protection. Use Axe anytime, smell great all the time.

Promotion and advertisingGetting the girl has never been easier, thanks to the AXE effect. As devoted users know, women can’t resist ANYONE wearing those great fragrances!

Axe gets naughty with its soft-core promotion

Soft-core porn has nothing on Axe body spray for men. Unilever's Axe took the men's grooming world by storm in 2002 and almost single-handedly created a new product - body spray - by focusing on a typical young guy's fantasy: that a single whiff will arouse attractive young women who subsequently won't be able to keep their hands off of him. Exaggerated humor makes the message campy, without diluting the core message. 

In the spring of 2007, as the competition for young men's grooming dollars got stiffer, Axe revamped its product packaging and launched an umbrella TV and online campaign sporting the tag "Bom Chicka Wah Wah" - '70s-porn slang for a sexual encounter. In the ads, aroused women exclaimed the phrase to young grocery clerks, waiters and other men they didn't know. But by then, the ads for Old Spice and other rivals were starting to copy Axe's frat-boy approach.

As a result, when it came time to introduce its new Vice line body spray, deodorant and shower gel, Axe sought to assert its position as an innovator. 

Commercial Review Assignment

AxeThe ad attracts people with its humor. The ad shows that if you use ‘Axe’ then there will be seven Snow Whites instead of Seven Dwarfs, and all of the snow whites will be attracted to you. If a person is very thorough with a thing then they can say that the ad is

depicting women as it shows women being completely overwhelmed by nothing more then just a deodorant.

AxeYet another Axe deodorant ad that can be said is depicting women. It’s not that people really believe that using ads will get girls all over you, but it’s just that they presented the ad using humor, and made something that attracts people very easily.

Promotion strategy

"Our goal was to drive sales of Axe Vice products to 18-24-year-old men, to build buzz and to weave the Axe brand into the culture," says Sam Chadha, Unilever director of antiperspirants and deodorants.

The resulting buzz, as it turned out, unexpectedly spilled over from Axe on to its sibling brand Dove - and not in a good way. 

To market Axe Vice, the company eschewed expensive TV ads and commissioned its agency, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, to create a spoofy, five-minute online video. Called "The Axe Vice Naughty to Nice Program," the film shows the antics of women being jailed for sexually abusing a guy because he smells too good and the unsuccessful efforts to rehabilitate them. Says Kevin Roddy, BBH executive creative director: "We were playing off the series Scared Straight!, in which hardened prisoners frighten at-risk young people into good behavior." But instead of focusing on the kind of sexy women in other Axe ads, "The Vice video found its humor by depicting very wholesome, farmer's-daughter type girls turning into raving maniacs due to the Axe scent," he says. 

The video also includes a comically shameless pr character who hammers home the product message. "The pr guy is intended as a wink to the audience, to show the whole video is meant as a joke," Chadha says. 

Written, produced and edited within six weeks, the video debuted on the Vice-branded Web site, axevice.com, in September 2007 and ran through March 2008. Initially, the Axe brand managers were worried that the video's storyline was too outrageous. But Axe's young male brand advisers reacted positively, prompting a go-ahead from senior management.

"Axe has the storytelling element right and the video reinforces the brand's provocative and contrarian personality, without constraints from TV and radio censors," says Lois Kelly, marketing consultant and author of Beyond Buzz: The Next Generation of Word-of-Mouth Marketing. "The PR guy provides the self-deprecating humor that the audience loves." 

To drive traffic to the site in September and October, Axe tapped Edelman for public relations, MindShare for media buying and Walton-Isaacson and GMR for event marketing. Print ads with Polaroid photos of mock mug shots of "nice girls who turned naughty" were inserted in college and military newspapers and thousands were distributed to men in bars. 

A contest to win a trip to Las Vegas in October was added to the Vice site. To enter, users played a crime-scene game involving all three Vice products. Online banner ads pushed guys to play the game and enter the contest. 

Axe posted the video on YouTube, and it was subsequently picked up by other networks. A customized Axe Vice skin was offered on RealNetworks and downloaded over 39,000 times.

To leverage the video beyond the computer, Axe partnered with Ad Infuse, putting ads on the Boost, Helio and Sprint mobile-phone networks from September to January. The mobile program targeted customers that online networks couldn't, offering a new level of personalization, according to Trevor Hamilton, director of national advertising sales at Ad Infuse. Banner ads showed the logo and images of a "naughty" girl at the bottom quarter of the phone's screen only if the user's profile said he was male, aged 18-24. The banner asked the member to sign up to receive five 30-second clips from the Axe video. Once the member clicked the sign-up button, he got a message that the first clip had been sent to his e-mail and he got the option to send the clip to other network members.

By mid-January the video had 24,000 views on YouTube, 9 million views overall, and the Axe Vice digital marketing effort (not including itv) delivered 275 million impressions according to Axe. 

But the reach of the provocative Vice video came with a price. The work contributed to a backlash against Axe and Unilever's female-friendly Dove brand. The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood launched a letter-writing campaign in October asking Unilever to end the Axe advertising, decrying the "hypocrisy inherent in Unilever's marketing Dove products by promoting 'real beauty' for girls while simultaneously advertising Axe body spray by degrading them," says Josh Golin, associate director. By

mid-January about 2,600 letters were sent to Unilever with no response from the company, says Golin.

About the same time, a mashup video of Dove and Axe ads was posted on YouTube as a parody of the popular Dove "Onslaught" video, which shows the negative impact of beauty advertising on young women. The parody modified the original tag "Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does" to "... before Unilever does." Created on his own time by Rye Clifton, a senior strategic planner at the Martin Agency, the parody garnered 98,000 views by January 24. 

"The Axe campaign is a spoof and not meant to be taken literally," the company said in a statement about the controversy. "Unilever is a large, global company with many brands in its portfolio. Each brand's efforts is tailored to reflect the unique interests and needs of its audience," it said. The company is "not sure" if the controversy is impacting the campaign's Web traffic or product sales, Chadha says. 

Axe appears to be unfazed by the hoopla. Wholesale distributors reported that Axe body spray led the men's grooming category in 2007. Nearly half of the top-10 best-selling deodorant brands for Imperial Distributors were Axe items, led by the body sprays, according to Al Jones, senior vice president of procurement at the company, which serves the eastern u.s. On the other hand, Dove may be feeling the sting. After growing 12.5 percent in 2005 and 10.1 percent last year, Dove sales were up less than 1 percent in the 52-week ending December 2, 2007, compared to 2006, according to Information Resources, Inc.

The Vice video is a key part of Axe's threefold boost in online marketing in the U.S. from $400,000 in 2006 to $1.4 million during the first 11 months of 2007, per Nielsen Online. But that's still just a drop in the bucket of its total annual u.s. ad budget of $41 million to $43 million.

Even with such a modest price tag, "the Vice video campaign fits neatly into Axe's brand strategy of over-the-top creativity aimed at a very specific audience," says marketing expert Kelly. While ads for rivals Tag and Old Spice try to be hip and comically sexy, the efforts seem "tactical and are less convincing," she says. "It looks like they are copying Axe and makes the consumer wonder what their real identities are." 

"Axe's strength is that it's so well-defined in how it acts and what it can do," says Roddy. "Rather than trying to find common denominators among many [consumer groups], it lives within knowing exactly who it is."

Comparison b/w AXE and SETWET

Opportunity in business is absolutely everywhere. A company hardly even known a little over a decade ago is now a pioneer in its field. Axe deo spray has built a legacy and a

fortune on it’s commitment to remove the stink of other men’s bodies and they’re proud of it. That’s been a starting point and since then they’ve diversified into a range of men’s toiletries from fragrances to aftershaves. Axe has now like many companies set it’s sights on India and for a sector that many aren’t interested in, the competition from Indian brands has just begun and is on the way to becoming bigger. Axe’s entry into India was based on it simply ‘testing the waters’ as such. The deodorant industry in India had been largely unorganized. Men-the gender  Axe exclusively make products for have long relied on traditional methods to remove body odor and for many it’s not even been an issue. 

But Axe knew that by creating awareness about their brand and what it could do, they’d be successful. It’s a mantra that has worked. Axe initially relied on a system of flooding Indian shops with their deodorants. They simply relied on the shop owner to sell their product to any male who was looking for a deodorant. They weren’t novel using this method. It had and continues to be done even today by multinational deodorant brands like Nike and Adidas but the fact that they constantly reacted to the demand for the spray by

increasing supply has helped them to become leaders in the field. Axe have however been hit by their pricing strategy. They have not set up an extensive manufacturing base in India as a result of which many of their products are imported from factories towards the east. This has pushed the prices of their spray up and it’s been this feature that rival deo sprays, especially Indian are looking to exploit. To combat this axe has launched a cheaper range of deo’s in India under theRexona brand. Both Axe and Rexona are run by the Unilever group. 

The Zatak brand is seen as the direct competitor to Axe which is also doing well because it’s been pricing its products cheaper. It’s also been around for longer than Rexona in the men’s department. Pricing aside, there’s the question of branding and this is where Axe clearly dominates. Their advertising campaigns are aimed at young men with catchy slogans and slightly provocative ads which as bold as they’ve been, have been successful in pushing up their sales. 

It’s also prompted their competitors to launch their own campaigns with Zatak’s latest campaign taking a bold dig at Axe in their own ads signifying for the first time in three years that the smaller David is looking to slay the bigger Goliath. Whether this will happen is something to be seen. 

For Axe the way forward will require them to bring the prices of their products down and look to set up a manufacturing hub in India.For Zatak, it’s about consolidating their position without losing out their consumers to newer entrantsThe Good

Axe is incredibly convenient to say the least. The newest version of the bottle of Axe features a twist top. The new top manages to eliminate any "accidental spraying", the only major complaint I'd ever had about Axe. Because of this new feature, the bottle can be easily thrown, without care, into a gym bag to offer the best fragrance option for those who are active. Personally, I did not bring cologne to the gym for fear of breaking the bottle. The metal of the Axe bottle prevents this problem as well. 

The multiple fragrances of Axe are a major selling point. The smell that each scent of Axe presents is strong but not over powering, and offers a great alternative to cologne. Each scent is unique, making it easy to have multiple favorites. Many compliments I've received fall into the "what are you wearing?" category; any four and a half dollar bottle that causes similar reactions to cologne is impressive. I can thank the smell of "Essence" for saving me the 50-60 dollars that I would usually spend on cologne. 

The Not So Good

The only complaint I have with Axe Deodorant Bodyspray centers around its actual deodorant properties. While the spray deodorant is useful for a day full of relaxation, I've found that it's odor eliminating properties struggle with anything more than simple daily activities (exercise, warm/hot/humid days). The smell of the product still lingers, but body odors come into the mix when Axe is the only deodorant used to produce an uneasy aroma. Axe does offer stick deodorant, however, and I have found that using a mix of both products offers constant body odor protection without overbearing the senses. 

Let’s face it, not every guy can afford grooming products that cost $20 for a single bar of soap. Hell, that’s six months worth of Irish Spring and frankly some guys prefer saving the cash for other gear. We understand.That doesn’t mean walking into the store necessary means you have to sell yourself short. AXE’s revamped Vice lineup: Revitalizing Shower Gel, Deodorant Bodyspray and Invisible Solid Antiperspirant are retuned to give you a better, longer-lasting scent combined with effective protection. The mad scientists at AXE even brought in renowned expert Ann Gottlieb to do just that. Better yet, the prices are street-wise and no guy can deny the benefits of that.

What this means to you: Whether you admit to it or not, you know the commercials. The ones touting of unrelenting female attention when you use AXE products. We’ll be the first to admit it’s not going to happen - the product is a product, and what you’re

selling is yourself. That said, they’ve got some damn fine and hilarious ‘Naughty To Nice’ commercials (one after the jump) so take a peek, pocket the cash you save and spend it on your own gear.