Brand Update : Lux

Lux got bigger. The brand has come back in style. Lux released its first commercial featuring the most famous "Star Couple " of bollywood - Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan. The brand is currently running this high profile campaign across the media space.

Watch the ad here : Lux new ad

HUL has been facing lot of heat from the competition. Most of its best sellers were losing market share and competition getting aggressive day by day. Despite having very popular brands, HUL began losing shares especially in the personal care category.
The HUL brands are facing tough competition from players like ITC , Wipro ,Godrej and the like.

Recently I checked on the HUL products purchased at my home , I was surprised to find that we have dropped many HUL products from our shopping list. In the soap category itself, we never purchased an HUL soap for the past 3 months or so. These spaces are now occupied by brands like Vivel,Dettol, Santoor etc.

In my earlier update on Lux, I mentioned that HUL is not promoting the "original " Lux and not using the equity of Aishwarya Rai. The new campaign involving the two biggest stars of bollywood gives a huge thrust to the brand.

Ordinary consumers seems to be very much impressed by the new campaign. My mother liked the ad so much that she plans to buy Lux soon.

Personally I feel that the ad could have been different. The theme is nothing new and is used by many brands before. But the Star Couple makes the theme irrelevant. The charm and the chemistry of the couple make good the flaws in the "big idea".The ad has a sticky factor and in that sense Lux benefits.

The current campaign although expensive gives the required thrust for Lux. Lux badly needed some thing new to bring back the consumers who switched to other brands and never returned. The brand had made a strong comeback and that too in style.

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Lux

Brand Update : Lux

Lux has a new endorser. True to the brand's heritage of being endorsed by the reigning queens of Bollywood, the brand has roped in Katrina Kaif as the new Lux girl.

The brand is currently running the campaign featuring Katrina across the channels for its new Purple Lotus cream variant.

Watch the ad here : Katrina Lux ad.

What is interesting is the change in the tagline of the Lux brand over the last few campaigns. Ever since the brand discarded its classic tagline of " Filmi Sitaroan ka saundarya sabun" , Lux has not been able to find a fitting tagline. The brand later adopted the taglines " Celebrating Beauty " and then later to " Why worry about beauty " . The last campaign had the simple voice over like " Lux with Beauty Oils ". The brand this time has further reinforced the USP of the brand as " Soap with cream and beauty oils".

This time Lux has used a new positioning " kaliyon se Thwecha ke liye" translated to " Skin as soft as budding/blossoming flowers ". While Lux with beauty oils is a more rational feature oriented pitching, the brand is also talking about the brand promise of a " Softer looking Skin". It is good the see Lux settling with its USP and positioning.

But the gain of Lux has resulted in a loss for another brand Dyna. Dyna which is the soap brand from Anchor Group was banking on Katrina Kaif for building the brand. The entire Dyna brand was heavily depended on Katrina rather than its positioning or differentiation. With Katrina ending the association with Dyna, it will be interesting to see the future of Dyna brand.

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Lux

Brand Update : Lux Extends to Deo

Lux, India's most famous personal care brand has extended itself to deo. The campaigns are on air featuring the extensions. The deo market in India is witnessing huge amount of brand activity with new brands being launched almost every month. According to Economic Times, the deo market is estimated to be around Rs 1300 crore and growing at 40%. 

The question as always is what can be logic behind HUL extending its iconic brand to deo. It is not that Lux is not extended before. The brand has soaps, shampoos, bodywash in the product-line. Globally this is the first time that the brand is extending to deodorants. 

HUL has been a pioneer in creating the deo category in India. The company holds its leadership position in the market with its iconic brand Axe. HUL also has its anti perspiration deo Sure and also Dove. So rather than investing on these brands why would HUL try to extend Lux into this category ? 

One of the reason can be to pre-empt competition by flooding the market with its own brands. Lux has a huge equity which will translate to trials and incremental sales. Further, the company is also wary about the launch of competing brands like Santoor, Nivea etc into this category. 

However, HUL is taking the risk of spreading the budgets too far on these extensions. After Axe, the company was not able to come out with another blockbuster deo brand. It pulled out Rexona and Sure was not able to replicate the success of Rexona ( during the initial years). Dove is also another brand which is extended to almost all imaginable personal care categories.

Lux as a brand will get more diluted  if HUL tries to milk its equity too much. None of its earlier extensions could replicate the success of the core brand. Rather than diluting, HUL could have launched new focused deo brands.

Brand Update : Can SRK save Lux ?

SRK is once again featuring in the ad of Lux. It was in 2005 that SRK stunned brand watchers in an ad for Lux. At that time Lux was celebrating 75 years of stardom. Circa 2012, Shah Rukh Khan again stars in Lux ad  not for  celebration of any milestone but a desperate attempt to rejuvenate the brand.

Lux which always centered around celebrities has been struggling for the last few years.Reports suggest that Lux is witnessing a de-growth thanks to competition from the likes of Santoor. Lux over the years has been facing a positioning problem which I have highlighted in my previous posts about the brand. Too many variants shifted the HUL's focus from strengthening the core brand to leveraging or rather squeeze the brand equity. This virtually made the core Lux brand vulnerable to competition. The commoditization of celebrity endorsement further diluted the celebrity-focused positioning of Lux. Virtually the differentiation of Lux was no longer existing. 

Lux is now in an un-enviable position. The core positioning of Lux- beauty soap of stars is virtually being killed by competition. Celebrities now are no longer differentiators. Lux also cannot risk going for a heavy repositioning sans celebrities because of its connection with Stars for over 75 years. The brand is in deep trouble.

With SRK, the brand is attempting another come back. Last year, Lux successfully leveraged Abhishek and Aishwarya and smartly took the platform of  ' Beauty'. 

The current campaign features SRK with the current Lux Diva Katrina Kaif. The brand completely changed its beauty based positioning ( benefit)  and decided to focus on fragrance (product feature ).The brand is pitching that  it contains international quality fragrances. From  benefit to  feature based positioning is a step backward for the brand. Usually brands start with feature based positioning and later graduate to higher -order attributes ( Laddering). Here Lux chose itself to downgrade from a higher -order positioning to basic stuff.The brand is absolutely confused about its future direction. 

Lux in the new campaign has the tagline : "Bas Zara Sa Lux " roughly translated to " Just need a little Lux" . The tagline is ideally suited for a detergent rather than a beauty soap. The treatment of the ad is below average with zero creativity and usual theme. No wonder the brand is on a downward spiral.

Watch the ad here : Lux SRK

What Lux right now needs is a thorough clarity about its brand manthra and its positioning.No amount of celebrity endorsement will work if the brand is confused about its positioning. It had earlier focused on beauty oil and now it is saying that fragrance is the key USP. This confusion is only going to kill this brand unless the marketing brains of HUL sit together and decide on the brand manthra for Lux. Other wise we are going to see the slow death of an iconic brand.