MxMIndia

Tag: Cinthol

  • The captain-in-waiting's annual endorsement fee has seen a meteoric rise over the past year, rivalling the likes of Bollywood heartthrob Ranbir Kapoor, the hottest brand ambassador in the film industry

    With deals worth Rs 17 cr a year, Virat Kohli beats Dhoni and Sachin in endorsements

    By Samidha Sharma

     

    India’s hottest young cricketer Virat Kohli is setting the world of brand endorsements alight. The Indian captain-in-the-making, whose exploits on the field, combined with his youth, good looks and never-say-die attitude, makes him a winner off the field too, has inked a Rs 10-crore per annum deal with German sports goods giant Adidas.

     

    The three-year contract, perhaps the most lucrative to be signed by an Indian sports star, will see the swashbuckling right-hand batsman endorsing the brand’s apparel and shoes.

     

    The Delhi lad has also struck a Rs 6.5 crore a year deal with a tyre brand that had master batsmen Sachin Tendulkar and Steve Waugh as its ambassadors, a person familiar with the development revealed.

     

    The two deals will see Kohli topping the likes of Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Tendulkar in terms of annual earnings per brand endorsement.

     

    Kohli, who turns 25 later this year, pocketed around Rs 40 crore from endorsements last year, but that sum may swell up substantially with these two deals in his kit bag. Currently, he lends his face to as many as 13 brands, including  deodorants.

     

    When contacted, an Adidas spokesperson declined to comment on the development. Tendulkar, who is Adidas’ current brand ambassador, is perhaps at the fag end of his illustrious career.

     

    And Kohli fits the bill perfectly as he is being groomed to take over the top job from Dhoni after the 2015 ICC World Cup, an executive from a sports management firm, who did not want to be named, said.

     

    Bunty Sajdeh-led Cornerstone Sport and Entertainment manages the Indian vice-captain’s endorsement contracts. Mr Sajdeh was unavailable for comment.

     

    Kohli’s annual endorsement fee has seen a meteoric rise over the past year, rivalling the likes of Bollywood heartthrob Ranbir Kapoor, the hottest brand ambassador in the film industry. Till last year, the cricket star used to command Rs 3 crore per brand annually, which went up to Rs 6 crore.

     

    The Rs 10-crore a year deal with Adidas propels him to a different league altogether. “For the past few years, Dhoni has been ruling the endorsement space, but Kohli is catching up very fast. While Dhoni connected well with the masses, Kohli has a more urban appeal which a lot of brands want to cash in on,” said Indranil Das Blah, COO of celebrity management firm CAA Kwan.

     

    The price escalation in Kohli’s endorsement contracts has meant that a lot of brands which had signed him early on must shell out much more to renew their deals or simply end their association with him.

     

    “We are willing to pay a premium, depending on what that number is. He has been a great fit for our brand which targets youngsters, and he has grown with us,” said J Suresh, MD and CEO, Arvind Lifestyle and Brands which has had the cricketer on board for three years as Flying Machine’s brand ambassador.

     

    The jeans-wear brand signed Kohli before the World Cup at a moderate price and its contract is up for renewal. With Rs 10 crore becoming the new benchmark, many brands will find it hard to match up to Brand Kohli’s price tag.

     

    Until recently, Kohli and Nike were in a five-year contract inked in 2008. However, things turned sour between the two sides when the US sports goods major went to court claiming Kohli had breached the contract by disagreeing to continue as its brand ambassador till 2014. But the Karnataka high court ruled in favour of the cricketer, allowing him to sign endorsement deals with other sports brands.

     

    Source:The Economic Times

    Copyright © 2013, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. All Rights Reserved

    Licensed to republish

     

  • Behind every great commercial is super strategy. Every week, MxMIndia will bring you the brief and the strat as given by the client and whatever else that went into creating a winning ad

    AdStrat: Cinthol’s awesome approach

    Sunil Kataria, EVP, Marketing and Sales, GCPL

     

    Name of the campaign/ad – Cinthol digital campaign

    The Brief

    – To drive preference for Cinthol deo spray fragrance for Cinthol

    – The objective of the campaign was to create a strong connect for the brand with the people who relishes challenge and are ready to push themselves no matter what the intensity

    – TVC should be creative, engaging and build a strong connect with the youth, hence the use of Virat Kohli as the face for the campaign

    – Campaign should create a buzz value before its launch and hence social media was utilized

     

    Research insights

    – We wanted to connect with young India and their motivation and aspirations in their life

    – They aren’t in a rat race and aren’t driven by competition; their motivation is more intrinsic and is centered on making their lives interesting

    – Taking on intense stimulating experiences makes them look forward to life and feel intensely alive

     

    The thought process behind the creative

    – Through this campaign we wanted to address the people who are intensely alive and to those that get inspired with such kind of people

    – Virat is one of India’s brightest and most promising cricketing talent and was the perfect fit for the brand as both resembles being young, energetic, passionate, intense

    – Through our products, communication and digital activations Cinthol will showcase and inspire us to be “intensely alive”

     

    Media vehicles chosen

    – We have followed an integrated approach where social media was used to create buzz about the whole campaign before the unveiling of final TVC

    – We created a twitter campaign #InViratsHead prior to the launch and has received tremendous response through it

    – The campaign has just started and has a very positive response. We will continue our media presence in all other mediums like print and radio as well

     

    Key issues kept in mind while executing the ad –

    – While the focus of the campaign was on TVC, the main idea was to create a buzz for the new campaign before the final unveiling of the TVC

    – Key challenge in hand was: To make #InViratsHead trend within a couple of hours, so that buzz could be created and sustained for three days till the launch of the commercial

     

    What is the differentiating factor about the ad?

    – It’s an attitude driven ad. It talks to people who are really passionate about their life and are ready to push their limits

    – The TVC was catchy due to the emotional spin depicted with Virat from being tensed to relish the challenge, looking into the camera menacingly, presumably calling out to the bowler

    – Building the excitement before the launch of the TVC through the social media platform

    -Facebook, Twitter, you tube was something different that was tried. Our strategy was to seed #InViratsHead by encouraging different flows of conversation. In this was we were able to involve parallel conversations about Virat, India, Cricket and youth. We have developed customized responses of Virat to few consumers to give the personalized touch to interaction. The response was phenomenal. Within 5 hours of its launch on Twitter, #InViratsHead was trending worldwide, including in India and all cities of India

    – We have broken the reveal part of our twitter campaign #MakesMeAlive, which basically asked users to contribute with their personal stories and moments

    – Together, #InViratsHead and #MakesMeAlive have now garnered more than 30,000 tweets reaching out to 2.5 million people and creating more than 10 million impressions (and counting) in a span of 6 days, giving the campaign more reach and popularity than #WhyThisKolaveri, a hashtag and viral video that had taken not just the nation but the world by storm

     

    Agency comment: “The campaign stays within the ‘Alive is awesome’ realm, but we’ve adopted a slightly different take for deos. Cinthol Deo is about intense fragrances, and Virat fit the bill very well being a passionate, intense competitor on the field. So we said we’d take a peek into his head and see what’s going on inside. And that intensity is something we did not try and put into words, but showed in action,” said Sajan Raj Kurup, Founder and Creative Chairman, Creativeland Asia.

     

    Client comment: Sunil Kataria, EVP, Marketing and Sales, GCPL, said, “Our new Alive is awesome campaign has been successful in building the desired awareness of our newly revamped product range and packaging identity of the brand. The launch of our new intense range of deo fragrances is sure to surprise and build a strong connect with the young audience.”

     

  • People being made to frolic in water to cue freshness has been done to death ever since Ms Karen Lunel went under a waterfall for Liril centuries ago. So there's literally no freshness out here

    Debrief: Cinthol: Not awesome, it’s tiresome

    By Anil Thakraney

     

    After dude, rock star, chillax, etc, the next big cliché in the urban world is ‘awesome’. Everyone flings the word around for all sorts of things, and feels cool (another cliché!) about it. Which is why I knew it was a matter of time before an advertiser latched on to it.

     

    ‘Alive is Awesome’ is the new tagline for Cinthol. And the brand hopes to net Young India with it. The TVC is basically lads and ladettes having a blast holidaying on beautiful foreign locales. They play around with different forms of water bodies (not Mumbai gutters), as the jingle belts out awesomeness in the background.

     

    [youtube width=”400″ height=”220″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzpcIvJ77g0[/youtube]

    Doesn’t work, to put it simply. People being made to frolic in water to cue freshness has been done to death ever since Ms Karen Lunel went under a waterfall for Liril centuries ago. So there’s literally no freshness out here. Also, the word ‘awesome’ is likely to be understood only in the urban areas, so this limits Cinthol’s appeal. Doesn’t make sense to me, I thought this is a mass soap brand. Unless Godrej has decided to make Cinthol super premium, but the same old boring packaging doesn’t suggest so.

     

    However, I do envy the models, the production crew and the ad agency personnel who got a free ride to such exotic destinations. Awesome! This is what makes advertising life fun, fun, fun. Now if only all this merriment had happened over a half-decent TV commercial.

     

    Rating: (On a scale of 1-5): 0. Zero freshness.

     

  • Creativeland Asia has been mandated to revamp the advertising of Cinthol

    Creativeland Asia to revamp Cinthol

    From the MxM Infodesk

     

    Creativeland Asia has bagged the creative mandate to revamp Cinthol, one of legendary personal care brands in India. As part of the mandate, Creativeland is required to approach Cinthol with their fresh new thinking while making it relevant for today’s consumer and their needs.

     

    Commenting on this development, Sajan RaJ Kurup, Founder and Creative Chairman, Creativeland Asia said, “Godrej has shown immense faith in Creativeland Asia. Working on Godrej Expert was an interesting challenge and the response from our client-partners has been very encouraging. Taking this partnership ahead, I am excited to work on Cinthol. Right from the 1980s, Cinthol has been an iconic brand. We all remember the days when popular celebrities such as Vinod Khanna endorsed the brand. We need to simply recreate the magic and the stature Cinthol enjoyed in the past.”

     

    Commenting on this development, Sunil Kataria, Head Sales and Marketing Godrej Consumer Products Ltd. said “Creativeland Asia has a fresh and creatively unique approach to brands. Cinthol is an iconic brand with a huge potential. We look forward to a strong association with Creativeland Asia as we work towards unlocking Cinthol’s immense potential.”

     

  • Analysts expect all leading FMCG companies to post strong results in the fourth quarter ended March and maintain their margins in the current fiscal

    FMCG players upbeat after Q4 sales boom

    By Ratna Bhushan & Sagar Malviya

     

    Consumer goods companies and retailers expect a spurt in demand this fiscal, buoyed by indications of better-than-expected earnings in the January-March quarter backed by a revival in consumer sentiment.

     

    Analysts expect all leading FMCG companies to post strong results in the fourth quarter ended March and maintain their margins in the current fiscal, even as gung-ho investors have pushed shares of most companies to their 52-week high on the Bombay Stock Exchange this month.

     

    “The last two quarters seem to have stabilised in terms of consumption though there have been price hikes,” said A Mahendran, MD, Godrej Consumer Products. The maker of Cinthol soap and Good Knight mosquito repellant expects its fourth quarter earnings to be better than analyst forecasts of 16-22 per cent increase in revenues.

     

    Growth in FMCG product sales signals revival of consumer sentiment over 2011 when market growth slipped to 8 per cent from 12 per cent the previous year.

     

    Companies now look to ride on high-margin products, rural demand and innovations to maintain the growth momentum without taking a hit on their margins.

     

    NO DOWN TRADING

    They are buoyed by the fact that there is no significant indication of down trading, or the trend of switching to a cheaper brand due to price increase, by consumers despite 5-10 per cent increase in prices of daily use items like soap, toothpaste and hair oil. “We have not seen downtrading,” Anand Burman, chairman of Dabur India, which makes Vatika shampoo and Amla hair oils, said. He added that a combination of rural consumption and growth from mass-priced products in urban markets were triggering demand for Dabur’s hair care and oral care products.

     

    But Harsh Mariwala, chairman and MD of Marico Ltd, which makes Parachute hair oil and Saffola edible oils, warned that margins may remain under pressure. “We expect healthy top line in continuation of the previous quarter…in terms of bottom line though, margin pressures will remain because of fluctuating raw material costs and complex global cycles,” he said.

     

    Prices of menthol have shot up 40 per cent over the past two months, while palm oil prices have surged 10 per cent in the last one month. But analysts expect margin pressure to ease with innovation gaining centrestage. Then companies will gradually increase their advertising and marketing expenditure, Edelweiss Financial Services research analyst Abneesh Roy said. “We expect margins to begin slow northward trajectory in the coming months as raw material prices cool off and rupee depreciation reverses,” Roy wrote in a report early this month.

     

    APRIL BOOM

    The country’s top retailer says that retail sales have picked up speed in the past two weeks and expects healthy demand to continue in the next two quarters. “While the January-March quarter was good and grew better than the same period last year with most retail segments growing by high single digits, we are seeing an upsurge in sales in the last two weeks across all formats,” Kishore Biyani, chairman of the country’s largest organised retailer Future Group, said.

     

    He said there is an upsurge in sales of even consumer durables April onwards, adding that Pantaloon, Big Bazaar and Home Town have witnessed high double-digit growth. Apparel, toys and footwear retailer Lifestyle International’s MD Kabir Lumba said its sales grew the most in the fourth quarter. “We have seen a lift from the lower trading conditions of September to November. While we grew 22 per cent overall last year, the fourth quarter grew faster,” he said.

     

    DURABLES STRUGGLE

    Makers of home appliances such as fridges and ACs are, meanwhile, reeling under the double whammy of late summer as well as price hikes. AC sales were down by 30-35 per cent year-on-year during the quarter, while there has been a marginal 3-5 per cent growth for refrigerators. “The overall market is down due to sluggish sales of cooling products. Temperatures are yet to rise to induce AC purchases, while the price increase for input cost and excise too have been a big dampener,” Kamal Nandi, VP (sales and marketing) at Godrej Appliances, said.

     

    Prices of products have gone up by 10-15 per cent due to input cost hikes, upgradation in star ratings for energy labelling and increase in excise duties in the Budget.

     

    While consumer sentiments had improved during the Republic Day period in January due to aggressive discounts and promotions by retailers, sales were muted in February and March. Whirlpool VP (corporate affairs and strategy) Shantanu DasGupta, however, said the new fiscal year has started in positive note. “April has started off okay, but it is early days yet,” he said.

     

    “Individual companies may be growing, but that’s not due to demand. Instead, it’s led by innovation in new launches and distribution gains,” Mr DasGupta added. Electronic firms are now betting more on LCD and LED televisions, washing machines and microwave ovens for growth.

     

    “Flat panel televisions continue growth momentum since this category did not see any significant price changes this year,” Samsung VP (audio-visual business) Raj Kumar Rishi said. Samsung expects sales of summer products like AC and refrigerators to gather momentum in the second quarter.

     

    (With inputs from Writankar Mukherjee and Sarah Jacob)
    Source: The Economic Times

    Copyright © 2012, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. All Rights Reserved