Santoor on a roll

The ‘ageless skin’ campaigns and innovative pricing strategies have made Wipro’s soap brand the largest selling in South India

Women want their skin to lie about their age. The image managers of Santoor, which has become the largest selling soap brand in South India, has made that the main selling point of their promotion campaign over the years.

The theme of ‘ageless skin’, captured first in a TV advertisement 20 years back, has remained constant over the years. And the company intends to keep it that way as long as it’s bringing the right results.

“While the theme has remained constant, the Santoor woman has evolved. In the first two years, the Santoor woman was at a wedding ceremony; she was buying bangles; she was buying a book etc. After that she began going to aerobics classes, and then after four-five years we took her to do dress designing. I think that has gone down very well with our consumers,” says Ambi M G Parameswaran, executive director & CEO of DraftFCB Ulka Advertising which is responsible for Santoor’s media campaign.

Parameswaran says women see themselves in every single Santoor soap ad. That may not be an exaggeration as women are surely buying the soap in large numbers. In the first quarter of the present fiscal, Santoor became the largest brand in its category in South India in value market share, though the company has just 7.5 per cent share in the Indian personal care soap market worth around Rs 8,000 crore.

In other markets, Santoor has gradually begun to garner market share. In Maharashtra, it is number three in terms of value though the brand is almost neck-and-neck with Lifebuoy in rural Maharashtra, with a market share of 22.7 per cent (Lifebuoy is at 22.9 per cent). The popularity of the brand in the villages is evident from the fact that while Santoor grew at 18 per cent in the first quarter of FY10, 55 per cent of the volume came from rural India.

Pricing obviously played a crucial part. Santoor was originally launched in 1985 as an ordinary soap with sandalwood and turmeric being its main ingredients. Though Moti and Mysore Sandal soap were the other brands which had sandal as main ingredient, they were available for a premium. Wipro tried to position the soap in the skincare segment at a popular pricing.

However, when the company realised that by banking on ingredients may not bring good results for long, it decided to reposition the brand from being ingredient-oriented to benefit-oriented on a platform of ‘younger looking skin’.

Ambi, who was involved with Santoor’s ‘younger looking skin’ media campaign from day one, says the ad was based on a series of studies by Wipro and DraftFCB on women. The study found out that though about 15-20 per cent of Indian women are working women, housewives too have desire to work. “We tried to fit Santoor in the dream of every single middle and upper class woman. The dream is that you can achieve something with your skills, you will look beautiful all your life, you will be able to bring up your children well and that people will mistake you for someone much younger,” he adds.

The brand itself has taken many forms as new variants like Santoor White (sandal and almond) and Santoor Glycerine, other than the hand wash and face wash in the personal wash segment. The company is exploring every possible route to grow the brand which presently has a market turnover of Rs 850 crore.

“Going ahead, while we would continue to leverage the positioning of the brand for younger looking skin, we are also exploring the possibilities of foraying into some other skincare categories and variants,” Anil Chugh, Senior VP, Wipro Consumer Care, said. The possible areas the company might look at in the skincare segment is hand and body lotion and day and night creams. “While, by and large, Santoor has become successful as a brand in the personal wash segment, we are trying to leverage the brand in the skincare segment,” he added.

So, what is the company doing to go higher up the pecking order? Vineet Agrawal, president of Wipro Consumer Care and Lighting says the company is in no hurry. “It took us 20 years to reach the number three position. They (Lifebuoy and Lux) are very, very large brands. Our aim is to grow our brand and grow faster than the industry,” he adds.

In fiscal 2008-09, Santoor grew 29 per cent against the industry growth of 10 per cent in value. Santoor today sells in 650,000 retail outlets while over 2 million outlets sell the soap as indirect channel.