Garnier : Take Care

Brand : Garnier
Company : Loreal India
Agency : Lowe Lintas

Brand Analysis Count : 437

Garnier is a brand that epitomizes smart marketing practice. This is a brand that
came to India in 1991 and crafted a special place for itself in the Indian
market.This is one global brand which has understood the dynamics of Indian
market.

Garnier came to India with its Ultra Duox range of shampoos. The brand is amass
market brand from Loreal which has a range of global premium personal care
brands like Maybelline, Ralph Lauren., Diesel ,Vichy etc. Loreal started its
operations as a joint venture with MJ Group . Later in 1994, the company started
its own operations.

All through these years, Garnier had a very consistent marketing approach. What
I liked about this brand was the kind of investment that it had put in for
marketing activities. Ofcourse all these happened because it had the support of its
parent company.

Garnier can be considered as a masstige brand. Although positioned as a

premium offering, the brand was wise enough to price it reasonable. Currently
Garnier is targeting the middle and upper socio-economic class.

Globally Loreal is a company that is famous for its product innovation. Garnier
too has built its brand by launching new products on a regular basis. A strategy
based on product innovation works best for a brand like Garnier. When the
consumer sees regular new product flow from the brand, it creates a sense of
excitement with in the consumer which will prompt her to stick to this
brand.Garnier was the first brand to introduce a cream based hair coloring
solution.

Garnier is now present in a diverse range of personal care product categories. It is

present in the hair-care and skin-care segments.
The brand have two sub-brands : Garnier Fructis and Garnier Ultra Doux. Fructis
is an interesting sub-brand which has clicked in the Indian market because of its
positioning as a fruit based product. Consumers readily embraced this variant
because it made sense to depend on a natural shampoo rather than chemical
based one.

Garnier is positioned as a nature- based ( green) innovative personal care brand

which takes care of your skin. The brand has a very catchy tagline " Take Care ".
Garnier's positioning strategy is more product based in the sense that it has tried
to emphasis individual product properties rather than a common brand image.
Most of its commercials are emphasizing on product strengths and innovation.
The brand is an example of the success of rational product based advertising
success. The brand is also sending a message that Indian consumers are also
influenced by rational messages and product innovations rather than mindless
emotional blah-blahs.

Another interesting marketing strategy adopted by Garnier is its advertising

execution. True to its global parentage, Garnier was careful in its advertising
theme. It uses a blend of foreign and Indian models and themes for its
campaign.Garnier ads can be termed as localized international advertising which
has a global touch but does not appear alien to Indian realities. The brand uses a
careful blend of celebrities and models in their campaigns without relying much
on their individual persona. Their products are always the stars in their
campaigns.

Recently Garnier launched another new innovative product in the Indian market
- Garnier Shampoo + Oil 2 in 1 shampoo. This is something that Indian consumer
has never seen before. And a product which Indian consumer find little difficult
to believe. Shampoo and oil are something that is not supposed to work together.
Infact shampoo is used against oil. ndian consumers are habituated to using oil
regularly and time usually works against using them both. And since these two
products are supposed to work against each other and time factor prevents them
from using both, Garnier has thought of a plan to integrate north-pole and south-
pole together.

Garnier Oil + Shampoo is a blend of 3 oils and shampoo. According to press

release, the oil will work within to strengthen the hair and shampoo will clean the
hair. This shampoo variant contains three oils - Olive,Avocado and Shea oil.

Recently , one of my earlier students talked to me about this brand launch. She
and her group had suggest such a product combination during a project
presentation to me as a part of the marketing course three years back. I
remember taking the group to a series of tough questioning ( in other words
-blasting) about the acceptance of such a product in the Indian market. She was
delighted that such an idea being implemented in the real marketing world.

My primary doubt is whether the brand be able to convince the customer that
shampoo and oil can go together ? Here the brand is trying to redefine a negative
relationship between two attributes and trying to convince the customers that
there is a scope for these two working together positively. According to Prof Kevin
lane Keller, this strategy is difficult but once established , it can be a powerful
differentiator. What the brand has to do is to develop a credible story that
consumers can agree ( source : Strategic Brand Management by Keller)
Watch the commercial here : Garnier oil Shampoo

Whether these innovations fail or succeed, Garnier gains much equity through
these steady stream of product launches. The premium positioning , smart
pricing, heavy investment in brand promotion, innovative products and strong
distribution reach has enabled this brand to create a special place in the Indian
personal care industry. A lesson for aspiring brands.
Case Study: L’Oreal’s Promotional Strategies in Indian Cosmetics Market for Garnier
Garnier has been very active and upfront in adopting new promotional techniques to market its
products. The company follows a very popular technique to advertise and market its products that
is the Viral Marketing policy. Viral marketing is a term coined to define the productive ways a
marketing message is made available. And corporate are using the medium to circulate brands
and brand messages. The idea has caught on like a virus, as efficiently as Information
Technology has entered households and businesses.

Firms are now structuring their businesses in a way that allows them to grow like a virus and lock
out the existing brick and mortar competitors through innovative pricing and exploitation of
competitors’ distribution channels. The beauty of this marketing technique is that none of it
requires any marketing. Customers, who have caught the virus, do the selling. Viral marketing
describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others,
creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence. Like
viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to
thousands, to millions.
Off the Internet, viral marketing has been referred to as “word-of-mouth”, “creating a buzz”,
“leveraging the media” and even “network marketing.” It’s a deceptively simple concept: Create a
message, send it via e-mail, and make it so compelling that recipients want to pass it on to
everyone in their address book. Advertisers are hot on the tactic, and the idea of putting
consumers to work spreading the word about a brand or service seems sound.
What is unique about the concept is that where brands or brand ideas are exchanged within
communities, they are idea-led, not advertising-led. There are some high-profile viral success
stories. Like Hotmail. By simply sending an e-mail, consumers hawked the service because every
message contained a Hotmail ad that helped it grow to 12 million accounts in its first year, way
back in 1996. The 1999-hit film ‘The Blair Witch Project’ also benefited from a similar contagion.
On web sites and in chat rooms, the film’s promoters hinted that the fictional tale was really a
documentary and let the bug run wild. In most cases, the consumers were bitten.
When Garnier launched its Fructis shampoo, they latched on to the idea. The firm had to
introduce the aspect of five times stronger hair and the firm had a braid competition whereby
consumers could register on a site and create a knot on the Fructis brand, as part of their entry
into the contest. The knot creation was actually created (visually presented on the site) and as a
next step, consumers were expected to invite their friends to visit the braid and add to their score.
A record 76,000 consumers created their own knot on the braid and forwarded the link to more
than 82,000 of their friends, a survey report indicated. Viral marketers practice delayed
gratification. They may not profit today, or tomorrow, but if they can generate a groundswell of
interest from something free, they know they will profit soon and for the rest of their lives. Since
‘Free’ happens to be the most powerful word in a marketer’s vocabulary, most viral marketing
programmes have attached themselves to it. The idea is to give away valuable products or
services to attract attention. And, more importantly, someone else’s resources are depleted rather
than our own. Garnier has positioned itself as a lifestyle product mainly targeting teenagers and
young girls. This is very evident from Garnier ads be it for Garnier fructis shampoos or for hair
color. In a recent advertisement of Garnier hair color, a daughter advises her mother to try the
product and thus makes an attempt to promote product among middle-aged women. Hence,
expanding the base of the target segment gives a whole new market to marketers, provided they
are successful in convincing the customers of the second-rung segment.
Companies need to be very strategic in presenting the product and its features to attract another
segment. At the same time, companies need to be sensitive about the impact of targeting other
segments on the existing target segment. It may be damaging, especially, if in a process of
expanding its customer base, a premier brand is targeted at the aspiring middle-class also. In
case of any signals of lowering demand with the existing target group, companies should adopt
line extensions by bringing suitable changes in the products.
Advertising and marketing specialists are aiming at young, urban Indian women, who are
earning their own money and are potential customers for a host of products, including
name-brand clothes, cosmetics and new cars.
Increasing its ad spend for the launch of its new products, L’Oreal has been relying more on its
international campaigns to make an impact in the Indian market. McCann Erickson in Mumbai
handles the L’Oreal and Maybelline account while Publicis India is in charge of Garnier. “The ad
accounts have been aligned according to our international affiliations with these agencies and we
try to have a mix of both the Indian and international ads,” says Mr. Rajgopal.
L’Oreal India currently has three brands in its consumer products portfolio and there are product
overlaps between its hair care, skin care and color cosmetics brands. Garnier, L’Oreal and
Maybelline have been defined by their price segments and positioning.
Read: Sharp-eyed L’Oreal gets head start in India
(http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/consumer_goods/article2980264.
ece)
Source: Scribd.com