The Axe effect: Competition acquires an edge

Axe angels are working overtime these days. Ever since Hindustan Unilever launched the ‘Call Me’ campaign that shows a girl giving her phone number to a boy doused in Axe, the angels (as the girls in the commercials are called) have received 3.5 million calls. And the phones just don’t stop ringing these days.

The commercials were launched after an exhaustive study by the Axe Research Lab showed that over 92 per cent of women are willing to give their phone number to a guy they liked in the first meeting. The study found other gems too: 70 per cent of women are willing to give their mobile numbers to men who are ‘cute’. The Axe commercials extended the logic further to say that women surely wouldn’t mind sharing their numbers with men who also smell good.

 

The logic worked, and how: Apart from the 3.5 million actual calls received, over 700,000 men have already registered for the wake-up call service within three months of the campaign launch.

If the market leader (Axe had 33 per cent market share in December 2008 as per A C Nielsen data) does something like this, competition can surely not be far behind to cash in on the “aspirational” value proposition of male deodorants.

That explains the flurry of high-voltage campaigns by companies such as Godrej Consumer Products (GCPL), Henkel, Nivea and Elder Pharma. The Rs 300 crore male deodorant market is growing at over 50 per cent per annum.

The reason for this heady growth is that they have become aspirational products , says GCPL’s Chief Operating Officer R K Sinha. GCPL, which has roped in Hrithik Roshan to endorse its male deodorant range, has cornered over 5 per cent market share in a short period. The company is now eyeing the No 2 slot, which is currently occupied by SetWet Zatak at 9.1 per cent.

There are other suitors too for that slot. Nivea Mens deodorant, which entered the market at the end of 2007, has already overtaken Park Avenue with close to 9 per cent market share. The growth prompted two other players to enter this segment earlier this month. While Henkel launched Fa Mens Extreme with film actor Bipasha Basu as its brand ambassador, Elder Health Care along with VLCC launched Fuel for Men.

The choice of Basu as Fa’s most visible face is best explained by Venkatesan Deenadayalan, branch head, Mudra Chennai, the agency behind the Fa Mens Extreme campaign. “Apart from personal care/protection etc, young men now use deodorants to attract the opposite sex,” he says. CavinKare is also set to join hands with Paris-based $3.5 billion fragrance products maker, Coty, to establish Adidas brand personal care products in India.

The market for male deodorants at an average price of Rs 140 per bottle is roughly 21.4 million cans per annum. And contrary to conventional wisdom, the target audience is not just the urban male. “It’s moving beyond the metros down the pop strata rapidly,” says Priya Nair, category head, oral care and deodorants, HUL, the makers of Axe.

Smelling good, it seems, has never been so profitable.