Insight
Parachute Advansed Ayurvedic Hair Oil was launched in 2010 in Southern India as an effective solution for hair loss control. The market had over 100 brands; four Behemoths sharing over 80% market share, making the Anti-Hair Fall category a fortress difficult to enter. The category is “notorious” for tall claims, but not being effective, creating huge consumer cynicism towards any brand talking hair loss.
Untapped Opportunity: While 85% of women have hair loss, less than 30% of them take specific action. (Source: Brand Studies). Madison Media was targeting the balance 70%, who had not done anything specific for hair loss.
After a successful launch, the agency had three tasks:
1. Trials: Get more cynical hair loss sufferers to try.
2. Recommendations: Get these users to recommend the brand to other sufferers.
3. Share of New Entrants: Get disproportionate share of new entrants into Category.
Brand Insight: Hair loss concern levels fluctuate. There are moments when the concern level is high and women want to do something; however it’s soon forgotten when other larger responsibilities of life take priority. This is the main reason for inaction. Consumers tried a brand only when someone close had personally recommended it to them. Personal recommendations played a greater role than brand advertising.
Madison Media had to do two things:
• Get women to act immediately on hair loss concern, before inertia sets in.
• Use consumers as ambassadors to be heard. The brand’s core proposition was built around recommendations, “A brand recommended by those who care about you”.
Strategy
Madison Media built a 2C model to drive this proposition – Culture and Conviction:
1. Culture to tap concern: In South India, as a ritual, hair wash happens on Fridays, being the “holy day”, when women go to temples. Hair wash causes more hair strands to fall, which they then observe in the towel when they dry their hair post wash. This increases female engagement with the problem, raising concern levels and causing them to re-evaluate what to do. The communication strategy was to be highly visible on all Fridays at the moment when a woman’s concern is high. The brand incorporated the towel as a relevant device in its TVC.
2. Conviction through recommendation: At times of hair fall, women trust their friends’ personal recommendations more than any amount of brand messaging. The strength of word of mouth was far greater than vanilla advertising. Madison Media devised a way to engineer personal recommendations in real life between consumers. Social media is the easiest way to build recommendations. But this audience was not even online (6% internet reach). Madison Media needed to use a medium that women already use to engineer personal recommendations.
The Media Solution – the mobile phone (The most personal device to communicate with close friends) became the core of their strategy. Mobile opened two avenues:
Sample the brand and build trials, engage and engineer recommendations.
However, it had to take into account the fact that most women use a feature phone; not a smart phone. In many cases, this is their first handset, with novelty value.
Execution
1. Culture: TVC - the communication was established on television. The observation of fallen hair strands on towel was built into the TVC. The campaign was planned with higher visibility on Fridays; all major properties and sponsorships were bought on Fridays. Tied up with a prominent network of high-reach TV Channels, for sustained Day Branding on consecutive Fridays. The print campaign was also scheduled on Fridays.
2. Conviction: The Mobile Model had seven steps:
1. Calls were made to consumers, introducing the brand and offering a free sample at home by courier.
2. Consumer opts in; sample bottle is couriered.
3. Consumer uses brand for 30 days; sees hair fall reduce (It takes 30 days to see visible results.)
4. On the 30th day, another call is made to the consumer asking if she liked the product. If yes, she could recommend it to 3 loved ones: A free bottle is then couriered on her behalf to them.
5. Once the consumer opted in she was asked to record a personal message for her friend recommending the brand.
6. Call goes to her friend, stating that a friend has recommended the product to her and the personal recorded message is played.
7. The cycle then starts with her friend (from Step 3), resulting in the campaign sparking a viral word of mouth movement.
Amplification: The print campaign had the bottles renamed as “My sister Priya’s Anti-Hair Fall Oil”, driving home the “Personally Recommended” proposition. Mobile numbers for missed calls for a free sample were also incorporated to add scale.
Results
1. Trials: New trials grew by 62% year on year (Source: Industry Standard Household Panel) and offtakes grew by 41% within six months. (Source: Industry Standard Retail Audit)
2. Engineering Recommendations:
- 230,266 unique conversations were engineered by the mobile campaign.
- 80% of women who got calls spoke to at least five people about it, magnifying and spreading the message of recommendation further.
- The quantum of recommendations on the brand grew at a rate 10 times that of the launch.
- 77% of women called up their friends, after recommending, gearing them up for their gesture of care.
3. Share of new entrants: The brand gained the highest number (43%) of new entrants into the category, being the biggest beneficiary of consumers who moved out of their inertia to take action. This was 1.5 times more than the market leader, who gained just 29% of new entrants, despite being three times its size. It saw a growth in market share to 15.6%, up from 12%: a significant shift in a highly competitive category. Parachute Advansed Ayurvedic Hair Oil is now the 2nd Largest Hair Fall Control Brand in South India. In the State of Kerala, the brand has doubled its market share from 19% to 38.4% in just one year.
For its work, the brand won a GOLD at Appies 2013 Asia Pacific Marketing Congress and was shortlisted in the WARC Prize for Asian Strategy 2013. It also won gold at Smarties India 2013, conducted by the Mobile Marketing Association in Brand Awareness; gold at the Indian Digital Media Awards 2013 in Mobile Campaign Category and silver for the Best On-Going Campaign at the Indian Emvies 2013 Media Awards.