IIM KOZHIKODE

PPBM assignment
Comparison of Lifebuoy with Rexona and Margo
Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................2
History of Lifebuoy......................................................................................................................................3
Objectives of the brand...............................................................................................................................3
Key Facts:.....................................................................................................................................................3
Product and marketing innovation..............................................................................................................4
Lifebuoy’s marketing strategy.....................................................................................................................4
Segmentation and Targeting...............................................................................................................4
Positioning strategy.............................................................................................................................4
Repositioning.......................................................................................................................................5
Market scope strategy.........................................................................................................................5
Market geographic strategy.................................................................................................................6
MARKET ENTRY STRATEGY..................................................................................................................6
PRODUCT POSITIONING STRATEGY.....................................................................................................6
PRODUCT OVERLAP STRATEGY............................................................................................................7
PROMOTIONAL STRATEGY...................................................................................................................7
Lifebuoy’s Distribution Strategy..................................................................................................................7
Failed Products............................................................................................................................................8
Rexona.................................................................................................................................................8
Margo..................................................................................................................................................8
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................9

Introduction

Lifebuoy is a brand of soap containing phenol marketed originally by Lever Brothers in England
beginning in 1895. It’s one of the most successful brands in the FMCG segments. We’ll compare
Lifebuoy with the brands like Rexona Soap and Margo which have not been successful over
years. We’ll analyze the key success factors and ones which caused failures for Rexona and
Margo in the subsequent sections.
History of Lifebuoy

Popular for over 100 years, the light red soap is still available in the United States, in specialty
shops that import it through Jupiter Imports (UK) in England. Though Lifebuoy has ceased to be
produced in the U.S. and the UK, it is still being mass produced by Unilever in Cyprus (for the
UK, EU and USA). In India, it is the main value brand there as well as in some other South Asian
and South East Asian countries like Malaysia, Singapore, India, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and
Indonesia.

Objectives of the brand

Lifebuoy's goal is to provide affordable and accessible hygiene and health solutions that enable
people to lead a life without fear of hygiene anxieties and health consequences. Lifebuoy is one
of Unilever's oldest and truly global brands. Lifebuoy Soap was launched in 1894 as an
affordable new product in the UK, for better personal hygiene. Soon after launch, Lifebuoy soap
travelled across the world, reaching countries such as India, where even today it is still the
market leading brand.

Consistent in Lifebuoy's 100+ year history has been its championing of health through
hygiene. The brand's core promise of protection and a commitment to support life through
unbeatable protection is at the heart of the brand name itself – Lifebuoy, the guarantee of
protection when you are threatened. This core values continues today, with Lifebuoy hygiene
education programs ongoing in countries including India, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia
and Vietnam.

Key Facts:

 Today Lifebuoy is sold in Asia and parts of Africa. It is market leader in every Asian
market where it is sold
 Lifebuoy soap has been proven in laboratories to provide 100% more effective germ
protection than ordinary soaps
 To date, 70 million people in rural India alone have experienced Lifebuoy's pioneering
Health Education program – the single largest private hygiene education program in the
world
 In 2005, Lifebuoy was awarded a 'Citizen Brand' accolade in Indonesia in recognition of
the work the brand has undertaken in hand wash education
 Nearly half of the Lifebuoy brand's consumption is in rural Asia, where most of the
population live on less than US$1 per day 
Product and marketing innovation

Since 2000, major changes have been made to the classic Lifebuoy soap bar to ensure that it
provides improved hygiene protection and a more enjoyable healthy washing experience for its
billions of consumers.

 Lifebuoy's classic hard red brick shape has been replaced with a new signature Lifebuoy
shape. The new shape makes the bar easier to grip and use
 The Lifebuoy team have developed a new formulation providing even better germ
protection which creates a rich lather on the skin
 Lifebuoy's characteristic medicated, carbolic smell has been replaced with a more
enjoyable and contemporary 'health' fragrance
 Lifebuoy has become more than just a red bar of soap – today the brand provides
hygiene and health solutions for families, including a range of bar soaps, hand wash
liquids and liquid shower gels. The most recent Lifebuoy innovation addresses the
number one skin hygiene and health concern for teens: oily and acne prone
skin. Lifebuoy Clear Skin is a bar soap formulated using radical new technology that is
clinically proven to reduce even severe acne, by 70% in 6 weeks. Regular use of twice a
day is proven to prevent and reduce the recurrence of acne             

Lifebuoy’s marketing strategy

Segmentation and Targeting

The targeting market for lifebuoy is all households who can afford buying soap and who want to
fulfill everyday need that provides them and their family with a 100% anti bacterial solution and
complete protection from all germs bacteria and cleanliness from dirt.

Lifebuoy believes that children are the potential agent for change and imparting education on
the importance of hand washing with soap will enable them to adopt early in life

Positioning strategy
Lifebuoy soap is a very old brand of bath soap in India, Lifebuoy is an anti bacterial soap and in
the beginning it positioned itself on its antibacterial qualities, it gained a number of customers
with this positioning, but then there comes the competition, first the Safeguard and then Dettol
soap, these two soaps are from P&G and RB respectively which are among the largest
consumer products’ companies in the world. Safeguard offers better quality soap with good
fragrance, apart from these features, Safeguard adopted fear strategy in its advertisements and
it helped in gaining momentum and soon Safeguard became the first choice in antibacterial
soaps’ segments. Safeguard’s effective campaigns including the Commander Safeguard
outplayed every competition, only Dettol soap could compete head to head with safeguard. 

All this put Lifebuoy out of lime light once in a while and to survive in marketplace, Lifebuoy
repositioned itself on price; it became a low price antibacterial soap. This strategy may have
boosted short term sales of Lifebuoy but it lost its brand value and credibility in the minds of
customers. Lifebuoy needed to reposition itself on quality rather than price.

Repositioning
The repositioning campaign of Lifebuoy was started at 2008, but it became more prominent
and effective in 2009, Lifebuoy along with the advertisement has improved its quality and
fragrance, most of the people had shifted from lifebuoy because it was of low quality and it
smelled terribly. Since Lifebuoy has improved its quality all it needed to run an effective
advertisement campaign to get the customers attention. It made very effective ads and used
fear strategy (which is effective in case of antibacterial soap). This has enabled it to get more
number of customers. Now a days, Lifebuoy is everywhere in Television, Radio, Newspapers
and Billboards.

With the help of marketing department and advertisement, Lifebuoy has successfully
repositioned itself as a quality antibacterial soap with better fragrance and durability. Many
companies try to reposition themselves when they see market trend shifting but most fail to do
so. But in case of Lifebuoy, it has been very successful. The interesting thing is that Lifebuoy is
running the same campaign in India and in India as is done by Unilever; this suggests that it is
considering India and India as the similar markets. 

Market scope strategy

Lifebuoy is using a multi market strategy because it has soap, shampoo and other antibacterial
liquid baths and hand wash as well

EVALUATION:

In evaluating this multimarket strategy, we come to know that Unilever is well using its Lifebuoy
brand in promoting and boosting sales of complimentary products. It has diversified that brand
into different categories to capture each and every segment of the market.
Market geographic strategy
History provides many examples of how businesses started locally and gradually expanded
nationally and internationally. Unilever is having an international market strategy for Lifebuoy
as it’s available in almost every continent of the world. It is a worldwide brand of Unilever
available in India, Pakistan, China, Indonesia, Cyprus, UK, USA etc.

EVALUATION:

Lifebuoy has a life span of more than 100 years, providing Unilever a key support in all of its
brand buckets. Unilever has globalized this product by making it an international brand. It has
made it available in Asia and Africa where it is used by those people who have a daily income of
less than $1. So Lifebuoy is well in line with its goals and objectives of providing health solutions
that enable people to lead a life sans hygienic anxieties and health consequences.

MARKET ENTRY STRATEGY

Lifebuoy is one of the old products of Unilever which has more than 100 years of successful
journey, we can simply say that Lifebuoy is the early entrants internationally and in India it is
the first-in in its kind of soaps.

By adopting the first-in strategy, Lifebuoy has captured the maximum share of the
market. Over 60 years in India we guess there is not a single home that didn’t use it. Lifebuoy
has taken the risk of the first-in and consequently got one of the biggest markets in Asian
countries by providing its quality and sustained priced product to both rural and urban areas of
India.

Being the first-in in the market, Unilever has shown strong commitment with its brand of life
time i.e. Lifebuoy and that commitment to its brand has really fostered the growth of Unilever
as well as its brand of Lifebuoy.

EVALUATION:

In evaluating the market commitment strategy it is necessary for the Unilever to again show
strong commitment to its product. Although Unilever has well realized the situation and make
changes in its strategies which are making some changes in the consumers mind but we think
there is more need required to retrieve its image of better quality at lower price in the
customers mind.

PRODUCT POSITIONING STRATEGY

Unilever positioned Lifebuoy in red colors so as to make it a brand of low income groups. They
chose their segment and positioned the brand according to the needs and wants of these
segments of customers. This segment wants long life of the soap and the chemical formula of
Lifebuoy enables it to have long life.

Due to competition, Unilever has to reposition its brand Lifebuoy because the needs and
wants of people have changed over years. Unilever should revise its marketing mix to reposition
Lifebuoy. They position their brand for the health conscious people. In repositioning they
changed the shape, color and the attributes of the Lifebuoy because want this kind of changes
and they do this through environmental scanning.

PRODUCT OVERLAP STRATEGY

Unilever is also using Overlap strategy between Capri and Lifebuoy. The potential customers
move from Capri to Lifebuoy and from Lifebuoy to Capri. In this way they are keeping the
potential customers with themselves.

PROMOTIONAL STRATEGY
Price Deal: A temporary reduction in price such as happy hours

Cents-off deal: Offers a brand at a lower price. Price reduction may be a percentage marked on
the package.

Price-pack deal: The packaging offers a consumer a certain percentage more of the product for
the same price

Coupons: coupons have become a standard mechanism for sales promotions.

Free-standing insert (FSI): A coupon booklet is inserted into the local newspaper for delivery.

Rebates: Consumers are offered money back if the receipt and barcode are mailed to the
producer.

Contests/sweepstakes/games: The consumer is automatically entered into the event by

purchasing the product.

Lifebuoy’s Distribution Strategy

Unilever uses a lot of distributors and retailers to supply its products in each market where the
final customer might reasonably look for it. While appointing a distributor for a particular area,
management uses its own judgment to select such a person that has a potential to operate
effectively.

Unilever uses an intensive distribution strategy for lifebuoy soap, but in shampoos category it
uses only extensive strategy. Unilever does not fight for the better shelf space for lifebuoy soap.
Lifebuoy is targeting middle and low income consumers; hence shelf space is not very
important.

Failed Products
Now we’ll discuss two failed products of the Indian soap market.

Rexona
Rexona had been laid to rest since 2008. The brand was in the life-support for quite a while. The
first attempt to kill the brand was during the power brand strategy where Rexona was planned
to migrate to Lux. At that time Rexona was launched with Lux milk cream. But after some time,
HLL decided not to migrate Rexona, but now the brand is history.

Most of its customers were sad because it was a nice soap and they were upset because such a
good brand was killed. For HUL, the reasons can be many. In this era of cut throat competition,
it does not make sense to have too many brands. So the logic is to put money into those brands
which are powerful. Rexona was never a volume/revenue generator for HLL, even though it had
a customer base.

Another reason is the existence of Rexona deodorant which had a different image
compared to the soap. Worldwide it’s famous as a deodorant.

It is more difficult to kill a brand compared to launching a new one. There can be issues of
managers getting emotional about the brand. Another difficulty is to handle the existing
customers of the brand. HUL expected that Rexona customers would shift to Hamam, but it was
proved otherwise.

Rexona deodorant would be given more focus by the company now that there is no
soap variant. HUL has been using imported International commercials of Rexona in India. It is
sloppy marketing to import global campaigns into a diverse market like India. HUL had the
resources to do it by itself but it’s trying the short-cut.

Margo
Margo is one of the oldest herbal soaps in India. The brand which is more than 85 years old is
famous for its neem content. The product although famous for its positive effects on the skin is
nowhere in the market. This is a brand which never changed with the customer. During its
launch, the product had a dedicated customer base and since the product was unique due to its
medicinal value, customers tend to be loyal. The whole brand was having Neem as its core
identity.
 But Margo failed to understand the changing dynamics of Indian consumers, more and
more choices began to unfold before the consumer and Margo became a niche brand. Margo
was positioned as “complete skin care soap". When market became fragmented with lot of
products positioning at different attributes, Margo was sidelined as a medicinal soap.

The product had inherent negatives, the fragrant was not attractive nor the
shape. It was also less lathering compared to its competitors. Margo changed hands from Shaw
Wallace to Henkel. Although Margo was re launched in 2003 with a new fragrance and shape, it
has not excited the market so far. The new positioning is “Margo skin, clear skin". The brand
had a following in AP, Tamilnadu and West Bengal. The single mistake the brand made was to
miss the new generation. It failed to attract the young users.

With Lifebuoys herbal variant and other established brands taking in the "neem" content away
from Margo, this brand needs a lot of money to rejuvenate itself. It couldn’t change its avatar
and fight lifebuoy in the health platform. This is a brand that failed to change with the changing
customers.

Conclusion

Thus we saw one successful brand Lifebuoy and two unsuccessful brands Rexona from the same
company HUL (as of Lifebuoy) and Margo from Henkel. We did an in depth analysis of the differentiating
factors which build or destroy a brand. These are the different marketing strategies like segmentation,
targeting, positioning, repositioning, promotions and distribution channels among others which play
pivotal roles, as illustrated in the paper.