Hll Bows To Pressure, Alters Pepsodent Ad

Today, the Pepso-dent toothpaste commercial aired on television channels will be a modified one.

Hindustan Lever Ltd (HLL), the Rs 6,700 crore consumer products company and manufacturer of Pepsodent has struck off the 102 per cent better claim and any references to the leading toothpaste brand.

This is an outcome of the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission (MRTPC) which issued an interim injunction last week restraining HLL from using the above two elements.

Hauled to the MRTPC by toothpaste major, the Rs 960 crore Colgate Palmolive two weeks ago, there seems to be no end to this aggressive battle.

 

From just superiority claims, it has become an ingredient war. Colgate officials claim that there is nothing new in the New Pespsodent.

According to the company officials, the 0.2 per cent Triclosan, the bacterial fighter ingredient used in the relaunched Pepsodent has been used by HLL ever since its launch in 1993.

The HLL top brass claims that the New Pepsodent, relaunched two months ago is 50 per cent more efficacious than the old one.

The issue is delivery and not the quantity of Triclosan, said Dalip Sehgal, marketing controller, personal products at HLL.

The companys managers pulled out scientific evidence, endorsed by eminent world perodontists and oral microbiologists to prove their point.

For HLL, success in the Rs 1000 crore toothpaste market hasnt come easy. Unlike soaps and detergents, HLL has been introducing toothpaste brands over the years. It struck gold in the late 1988 when it relaunched Close-Up gel for the third time.

The oldest HLL oral care brand was S R Gibbs, a paste tablet. Like a shaving round, consumers had to wet and rub their brushes on the tablet. The brand was phased out in the sixties. The striped Signal and its variant Signal Flouride were withdrawn a decade ago.

The white Menthadent-G launched in 1993 became Pepsodent-G soon after.

Today, the HLL brands are clearly threatening the Colgate supremacy.

According to market research agency ORG-MARG figures, HLL has increased its toothpaste share from 14.2 per cent in 1991 to 29.1 per cent this year. In the corresponding period, the Colgate pie has shrunk from 56.8 per cent to 55.3 per cent.

Overall, the Colgate performance is not startling, but its flagship brand Colgate Dental Cream (CDC) is not generating enough foam.

The CDC share is down from 52.4 per cent in 1991 to 43.4 per cent today. Whats holding it together are the CDC variants, says a marketing consultant. These include the Colgate Gel, Colgate Calciguard and Colgate Total.

HLLs Close-Up has increased three percentage points to 16.5 per cent in the last six years. And Pepsodent stands at 10.7 per cent today. With so much at stake, Colgate Palmolive is fighting tooth and nail to regain lost ground.