Johnson & Johnson is making an all-out bid effort to recapture the initiative in the sanitary napkins market with its new brand, Spirit. Will it succeed?
In the first round of the battle for the Rs 75 crore sanitary napkins market, Procter & Gamble (P&G), the challenger, had easily walked away with the honours. P&G's brand Whisper not only ended Johnson & Johnson's (J&J) monopoly, it also wrestled market leadership away from the latter's Carefree and Stayfree brands.
Round two is starting up now. Still smarting from its drubbing in the last round, J&J is making an all out effort to recapture the initiative in the market, with its new brand -- Spirit. Not that P&G is sitting idle -- it introduced its own new brand, Whisper Extra Dry, on the same day that Spirit was launched.
Will Spirit help J&J grab back its dominance or will will P&G's Whisper continue to rule supreme? Before looking at what each company is doing this time round, a quick rundown on the history of the battle first.
Before P&G came into the market in 1989, Johnson & Johnson had been the only player in the sanitary napkins market. The latter had two brands -- Carefree and Stayfree. The former were the belted sanitary napkins while the latter was the beltless range. Being the only player in the market, J&J had perhaps grown a bit complacent.
P&G walked into the sanitary napkins market with a product that claimed clear superiority over the J&J brands. It talked of extra absorption capacity and priced its product at a premium. It backed its launch with an aggressive marketing exercise, going in for extensive sampling of its brand among working women, and designing its advertising around testimonials during product tests.
The plank of product superiority worked wonderfully. Despite J&J's best efforts,
Whisper clearly took the lead in the market. Though J&J tried to counter the Whisper onslaught by launching its own premium brand, Silky Dry, it failed miserably. Despite extensive marketing support, Silky Dry remained a distant also ran to Whisper.
As things stand at the moment, Whisper alone has a 44.6 per cent share by volume and a 49.8 per cent share by value of the total sanitary napkins market -- nearly the same as the combined share of the three J&J brands together.
Obviously, J&J is not happy with that state of affairs. And that is why it has launched Stayfree Spirit. The new brand, J&J hopes, will bring back the market share it has lost.
The USP being touted for Spirit is its "flow check system". And the high profile advertising campaign talks of "freeing the mind" of women. And instead of just positioning it as a superior napkin for every woman, J&J's campaign sharply focuses on active college and school girls from affluent families. The television advertising is placed in a discotheque and the model is a young, college-going girl.
There is a logic behind focusing on that particular target group. A recent market survey showed that, after the advent of Whisper, the sanitary market had got clearly segmented in terms of user profile and brands. J&J's Carefree, a belted sanitary napkin, dominates the entry level market. It is generally bought by first time users -- that is by women who are adopting readymade sanitary napkins for the first time. J&J's Stayfree brand, a beltless napkin, is generally used by women who have "graduated" from the Carefree brand.
Both these brands are relatively cheap and appeal to the lower and lower-middle income groups. P&G's Whisper and J&J's Silky Dry sew up the top end of the market. In the beginning, Whisper was launched as the sanitary napkin of choice for affluent, working women. Silky Dry came in with much the same positioning. Though Whisper and Silky Dry are so-called "premium" brands, they together take up more than 50 per cent by both volume and value of the total sanitary napkins market.
J&J's Spirit is cleverly designed to take up the sole target segment no one has focused on so far -- first time users who are also affluent. (Whisper's advertising campaign always showed slightly older women.) And it is not depending on advertising alone to grab the attention of its target group. It has also gone in for special packaging with bright graphic designs to catch the eyes of its potential buyers. And it is blanketing medical stores with posters and other POP material to play up its brand.
"The packaging is appealing to the eyes, and reduces the embarrasment faced by women when they need to purchase the napkins," says a chemist who has just received the new brand which is priced at Rs 42 a packet.
What is P&G doing to handle the threat of Spirit? It launched Whisper Extra Dry the same day that Spirit was launched. However, apart from claiming to have an even better product, it has not really gone on overdrive to counter the J&J moves. Whisper Extra Dry has much the same packaging as its earlier offerings. And the advertising and promotional campaigns are fairly low key too. In fact, it seems quite content to wait and watch how J&J's Spirit does.
Early reports from the marketplace suggest that Spirit is enjoying both good visibility as well as buyer response. "It is well packaged and looks are very important for initial trials," says a college girl in Mumbai. Even chemists are happy with J&J's marketing support.
"They are sending posters and advertising it very well," says one. Whisper Extra Dry, on the other hand, is not making much ripples. Even though it has been shipped to all retailers, awareness about it among consumers is relatively low, says another chemist.
The crucial question bothering market watchers though is whether the second round of sanitary napkin wars actually speed up the growth of the market, which is chugging along at a sedate 8 per cent per annum? Both J&J and P&G think that the market can be made to grow at the rate of 25 per cent or so per annum. And yet, there are fears that the new brands being launched will only cannibalise the shares of existing brands rather than grow the market. Because while Spirit is focused sharply in its communication, one market analyst points out that affluent college girls were buying sanitary napkins even earlier -- only they were buying Whisper so far.
And as far as Whisper Extra Dry is concerned, it is aimed at someone who is not satisfied with the regular Whisper models -- and is hardly likely to increase the total market size.
