HINDUSTAN LEVER LIMITED

INTRODUCTION

HINDUSTAN LEVER LIMITED (HLL) is India's largest fast moving consumer goods
company, with leadership in Home & Personal Care Products and Foods & Beverages.
HLL's brands, spread across 20 distinct consumer categories, touch the lives of two out of
three Indians. They endow the company with a scale of combined volumes of about 4
million tonnes and sales of Rs.10, 000 crores.
The leading business magazine, Forbes Global, has rated HLL as the best consumer
household products company. Far Eastern Economic Review has rated HLL as
India’s most respected company. Asiamoney has rated HLL as one of India’s best
managed companies. Leading national publications, like The Economic Times,
Business World, and Business Today have also rated HLL as one of India’s most
respected companies and the number one in Market Value Added and EVA.
• The vision that inspires HLL's 32,400 employees (40,000 including Group
Companies), including about 1,425 managers, is to “meet everyday needs of
people everywhere - to anticipate the aspirations of our consumers and customers
and to respond creatively and competitively with branded products and services
which raise the quality of life.”
• This objective is achieved through the brands that the company markets.
It is an ethos HLL shares with its parent company, Unilever, which holds 51.55% of the
equity. A Fortune 500 transnational, Unilever sells Foods and Home and Personal Care
brands through 300 subsidiary companies in about 100 countries worldwide with
products on sale in a further 50.

BUSINESS NATURE

HLL is India's largest marketer of Soaps, Detergents and Home Care products. It has the
country’s largest Personal Products business, leading in Shampoos, Skin Care Products,
Colour Cosmetics, and Deodorants. HLL is also the market leader in Tea, Processed
Coffee, branded Wheat Flour, Tomato Products, Ice cream, Soups, Jams and Squashes.
HLL is also one of the country's biggest exporters and has been recognised as a Golden
Super Star Trading House by the Government of India; it is a net foreign exchange earner.
HLL is India's

Largest exporter of branded fast moving consumer goods. The company's Exports
portfolio includes HLL's brands of Soaps and Detergents, Personal Products, Home Care
Products, Tea and Coffee. HLL is also driving exports in chosen areas where India has a
competitive advantage – Marine Products, Basmati Rice, Castor Oil and its Derivatives. 
It is India's largest exporter of Marine Products, and one of the largest global players in
castor.

MARKET LEADING BRANDS

HLL’s brands have become household names. The company’s strategy is to concentrate
its resources on 30 national power brands, and 10 other brands which are strong in certain
regions. The top five brands together account for sales of over Rs.3000 crores. Each of
these mega brands has a potential scale of Rs.1000 crores in the foreseeable future.

Some of the big brands in Soaps and Detergents are Lifebuoy, Lux, Liril, Hamam,
Breeze, Dove, (all soaps) surf excel,surf , Rin, Wheel (the number one detergent brand in
India, and HLL's largest), 501, Sunlight (all detergents). HLL also markets the Vim and
Domex range of Home Care Products. In the Personal Products business, HLL's Hair
Care franchises are Clinic, Sunsilk and Lux shampoos; the company markets Nihar oil. In
Oral Care, the portfolio comprises Close-up and Pepsodent toothpastes and toothbrushes.
In Skin Care, HLL markets Fair & Lovely Skin Cream and Lotion, the largest selling
Skin Care Product in India; a brand developed in India, it is now exported to over 30
countries. It has been extended as an Ayurvedic cream, an under-eye cream, a soap and a
talc, in line with the strategy to take brands across relevant categories. The other major
Skin Care Franchises are Pond’s, Vaseline, Lakme and Pears. In Colour Cosmetics, HLL
markets the Lakme and Elle-18 ranges. In Deodorants, the key brands are Rexona, Axe,
Denim and Pond's, while the Talc brands are Pond's, Liril, Fair & Lovely, Vaseline and
Lifebuoy. Axe and Denim are HLL’s franchises for Men’s toiletries.

HLL has recently launched Lever Ayush Ayurvedic Health & Personal Care Products.
Health Care is among the new businesses HLL has chosen to enter. The product range
comprises Cough Naashak Syrup, Headache Naashak Roll-on, Dandruff Naashak
Shampoo, Hair Rakshak Oil and Body Rakshak Soap. The purity of the Ayurvedic
ingredients in Lever Ayush is endorsed by the renowned Arya Vaidya Pharmacy (AVP) of
Coimbatore.

PRODUCT & QUALITY STRATEGIES:

It is for the first time that rigorous Testing procedures of the pharmaceutical industry
have been applied to Ayurvedic products. That is why the brand seal is ‘Truth of
Ayurveda; Proof of Science’.HLL has started franchised Lakme Beauty Salons, offering
standardised services, in line with the strategy to add a service dimension to relevant
brands.
HLL and Pepsi have formed an alliance to distribute a full range of tea and coffee and
soft beverages through vending machines; HLL already has a base of around 15000 such
machines. The coffee business comprises Bru Instant Coffee and Deluxe Green Label
Roast & GroundCoffee.
The Kissan and Knorr Foods range comprises Spreads & Jams, Biscuit Sticks, Soups,
Squashes, Tomato Ketchup, Sauces, Puree, and Cooking Aids. Popular Foods, lFlour
Iodized Edible Salt, under the Knorr Annapurna brand name, have met with remarkable
success.

THE AXE EFFEct

INTRODUCTION

axe, or lynx is a brand of male grooming products, owned by Anglo-

Dutch company Unilever who manufacture a range of products in the health & beauty,
household cleaning, food and ice cream categories.
Axe's lead product is a deodoran body spray. The brand also includes deodorant sticks,
roll-ons, anti-perspirants, aftershaves and shower gels. In most of the world the brand is
named axe; in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and the United Kingdom it is
named lynx due to conflicts regarding the trademark.

• AXE Deodorant-1999
• Tagline “The Axe Effect”
• Portrayed as a ‘weapon of seduction’
• Five Fragrance: Dimension, Java, Phoenix, Pulse and Voodoo

Axe, the deodorant that is considered cool, fashionable and stylish by young men was
launched in India in 1999. Available in more than 60 countries around the world, it is a
world leader in male toiletries.
Axe has a mix that is completely harmonised globally – from its proposition and
communication to the product, as available on the shelf.
Axe is available in five fragrances: Java, Pulse, Dimension, Voodoo and Phoenix. Axe
has become the leading male deodorant brand in India within just one year of its launch.
Consumers associate a lifestyle of cool clubs, cool music and cool fashion with Axe. The
youth view it as an icon which introduces many 'firsts' to their world of music and dance
– like the first "World's Longest Dance Party" and the first ever 'Axe Voodoo Island Party'

Axe, a brand marketed by M/S. Hindustan Unilever Ltd. (HUL) in India, holds the
market leader position in the nascent Indian deodorant industry. Though general
information regarding market, image positioning etc. will cater to the complete Axe line
of deodorants, product specifics will be restricted to the bodyspray segment alone.

The report starts with an overview of the Indian market for Deodorants over the last 4-5
years, with relevant supporting quantitative information. The overview also projects
market performance and potential for the next 5-6 years.

We then identify the multiple segments that make up this market for deodorants using
relevant criteria that will involve the demographic, psychographic and behavioural
characteristics of the consumers. Segmentation will yield us a plethora of segment
combinations. Among these segments, we will analyse only those in which Axe is active
because of the best opportunities available. These are called ‘Target Segments’ and the
process is called Targeting. Specific reasons for the targeting become clearer once we
appreciate the image that Axe carries and the specific value proposition it conveys to its
target consumer, or, in other words the brand Positioning for Axe. Thus, the STP
(Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning) model described above helps us comprehend the
marketing process for Axe at a much more granular level.

In the background of the observed target market scenario for Axe, we start with the
analysis of the offering by analysing each of the following solution entities:
Ø The Product Offering
Ø Price
Ø Place
Ø Promotions Used
The above model, also popularly known as the 4Ps approach, is used to analyse the
marketing tools that HUL uses for influencing consumer-buying behaviour.

Packaging
Packaging involves designing and producing the container or wrapper for a product. The
package may include the product's primary container a secondary package that is thrown
away when the product is about to be used and the shipping package necessary to store,
identify, and ship the product
The axe deodorant contain in stylish bottle .its the primary container of the
axe, there is no secondary package for the axe deodorant.

Growing Use of packaging as marketing tool;

1. Self service
2. Consumer affluence: consumer are now willing to pay a little more for
convenience, appearance and prestige of better packages.
3. Company & Brand Image: Instant Recognition
4. Innovation Opportunity

Labeling

printed information appearing on or with the package, is also part of packaging.

On the bottle of the axe there is really stylish printing ,stylish cap.written all
the information about the axe deodorant.there net volume, price,
manufacture date and there variant

PRODUCT MIX AND LINE

A product mix (also called product assortment) is the set of all products and items that a
particular seller offers.
A product mix consists of various product lines.
A product line is a group of products that are closely related, because they function in a
similar manner, are sold to the same customer groups, are marketed through the same
types of outlets, or fall within given price ranges.

Width – Number of different product lines offered

Length – Number of products offered within a particular product line.
Product Line Depth – Number of versions offered of each product in the line.
Consistency – how closely related the various product lines are in end use, production
requirement, distribution channel.

products
Deodorant Bodyspray

Invisible Solid Antiperspirant & Deodorant

Shower Gel

AXE DEODORANT

Axe is available in five fragrances: Java, Pulse, Dimension, Voodoo and Phoenix

From its launch, the yearly fragrance variant of Axe has played a key part in the success
of the brand, by offering something new each year. The type of fragrance variants have
evolved over time. From 1983 until about 1989, the variant names were descriptions of
the odor of the fragrance inside and included Musk, Spice, Amber, Marine and Oriental.
From 1990 until 1996 geographic names were used such
as Africa, Alaska, Java, Nevada and Inca. From 1996 to 2002 Axe took inspiration
from Calvin Klein fragrances (also owned by Unilever at that time), using the same
perfumer, Anne Gottlieb, to develop the fragrances to launch variants such as Dimension,
Apollo, Voodoo, Gravity and Phoenix.
From 2003 Axe variants showed clever ways they helped men get women. In 2003 the
Pulse fragrance showed how it gave geeky men the confidence to dance to get women.
This was followed by Touch, Unlimited, Clix and in 2007 Vice was marketed on a theme
of making "nice" women become "naughty".
In 2008 a different direction was taken when a chocolate scented body spray, Dark
Temptation, was released.

PRICING

The price of all the variants of axe are same. the all axe are in the same range, they just
have different fragrance and flavour

AXE DARK TEMPTATION – Rs. 150, net contain 150ml/96g

AXE RECOVER- Rs.-150, net contain 150ml/96g
AXE AFRICA-Rs-150, net contain 150ml/96g
All product categories are behaving similarly OR are there any differences?
– Increasing competition and
 – Dominance of few companies
If there are differences, then are there any specific movements that can be observed in the
product mix of these categories?

Line pruning - There is a tendency for product lines to lengthen over time. Hence a
review must be carried out regularly.

Line modernization – Modernizing all products in the line

Line featuring – Selecting a few items from the line and promoting them aggressively to
attract attention to the total line

Product feature Axe Deodorant Body Spray For Men is a unique all-over bodyspray
that combines a seductive fragrance with effective deodorant protection. Use Axe
anytime, smell great all the time.

Promotion and advertising

Getting the girl has never been easier, thanks to the AXE effect. As
devoted users know, women can’t resist ANYONE wearing those great
fragrances!

Axe gets naughty with its soft-core promotion

Soft-core porn has nothing on Axe body spray for men. Unilever's Axe took the men's grooming
world by storm in 2002 and almost single-handedly created a new product - body spray - by
focusing on a typical young guy's fantasy: that a single whiff will arouse attractive young
women who subsequently won't be able to keep their hands off of him. Exaggerated humor
makes the message campy, without diluting the core message.

In the spring of 2007, as the competition for young men's grooming dollars got stiffer, Axe
revamped its product packaging and launched an umbrella TV and online campaign
sporting the tag "Bom Chicka Wah Wah" - '70s-porn slang for a sexual encounter. In the ads,
aroused women exclaimed the phrase to young grocery clerks, waiters and other men they
didn't know. But by then, the ads for Old Spice and other rivals were starting to copy Axe's
frat-boy approach.

As a result, when it came time to introduce its new Vice line body spray, deodorant and
shower gel, Axe sought to assert its position as an innovator.

Commercial Review Assignment

Axe
The ad attracts people with its humor. The ad shows that if you use ‘Axe’ then there will
be seven Snow Whites instead of Seven Dwarfs, and all of the snow whites will be
attracted to you. If a person is very thorough with a thing then they can say that the ad is
depicting women as it shows women being completely overwhelmed by nothing more
then just a deodorant.
Axe
Yet another Axe deodorant ad that can be said is depicting women. It’s not that people
really believe that using ads will get girls all over you, but it’s just that they presented the
ad using humor, and made something that attracts people very easily.

Promotion strategy

"Our goal was to drive sales of Axe Vice products to 18-24-year-old men, to build buzz
and to weave the Axe brand into the culture," says Sam Chadha, Unilever director of
antiperspirants and deodorants.

The resulting buzz, as it turned out, unexpectedly spilled over from Axe on to its sibling
brand Dove - and not in a good way.

To market Axe Vice, the company eschewed expensive TV ads and commissioned its
agency, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, to create a spoofy, five-minute online video. Called "The
Axe Vice Naughty to Nice Program," the film shows the antics of women being jailed for
sexually abusing a guy because he smells too good and the unsuccessful efforts to
rehabilitate them. Says Kevin Roddy, BBH executive creative director: "We were playing
off the series Scared Straight!, in which hardened prisoners frighten at-risk young people
into good behavior." But instead of focusing on the kind of sexy women in other Axe ads,
"The Vice video found its humor by depicting very wholesome, farmer's-daughter type
girls turning into raving maniacs due to the Axe scent," he says.

The video also includes a comically shameless pr character who hammers home the
product message. "The pr guy is intended as a wink to the audience, to show the whole
video is meant as a joke," Chadha says.

Written, produced and edited within six weeks, the video debuted on the Vice-branded
Web site, axevice.com, in September 2007 and ran through March 2008. Initially, the Axe
brand managers were worried that the video's storyline was too outrageous. But Axe's
young male brand advisers reacted positively, prompting a go-ahead from senior
management.

"Axe has the storytelling element right and the video reinforces the brand's provocative
and contrarian personality, without constraints from TV and radio censors," says Lois
Kelly, marketing consultant and author of Beyond Buzz: The Next Generation of Word-
of-Mouth Marketing. "The PR guy provides the self-deprecating humor that the audience
loves."

To drive traffic to the site in September and October, Axe tapped Edelman for public
relations, MindShare for media buying and Walton-Isaacson and GMR for event
marketing. Print ads with Polaroid photos of mock mug shots of "nice girls who turned
naughty" were inserted in college and military newspapers and thousands were
distributed to men in bars.

A contest to win a trip to Las Vegas in October was added to the Vice site. To enter, users
played a crime-scene game involving all three Vice products. Online banner ads pushed
guys to play the game and enter the contest.

Axe posted the video on YouTube, and it was subsequently picked up by other networks.
A customized Axe Vice skin was offered on RealNetworks and downloaded over 39,000
times.

To leverage the video beyond the computer, Axe partnered with Ad Infuse, putting ads on
the Boost, Helio and Sprint mobile-phone networks from September to January. The
mobile program targeted customers that online networks couldn't, offering a new level of
personalization, according to Trevor Hamilton, director of national advertising sales at Ad
Infuse. Banner ads showed the logo and images of a "naughty" girl at the bottom quarter
of the phone's screen only if the user's profile said he was male, aged 18-24. The banner
asked the member to sign up to receive five 30-second clips from the Axe video. Once
the member clicked the sign-up button, he got a message that the first clip had been sent
to his e-mail and he got the option to send the clip to other network members.

By mid-January the video had 24,000 views on YouTube, 9 million views overall, and the
Axe Vice digital marketing effort (not including itv) delivered 275 million impressions
according to Axe.

But the reach of the provocative Vice video came with a price. The work contributed to a
backlash against Axe and Unilever's female-friendly Dove brand. The Campaign for a
Commercial-Free Childhood launched a letter-writing campaign in October asking
Unilever to end the Axe advertising, decrying the "hypocrisy inherent in Unilever's
marketing Dove products by promoting 'real beauty' for girls while simultaneously
advertising Axe body spray by degrading them," says Josh Golin, associate director. By
mid-January about 2,600 letters were sent to Unilever with no response from the
company, says Golin.

About the same time, a mashup video of Dove and Axe ads was posted on YouTube as a
parody of the popular Dove "Onslaught" video, which shows the negative impact of beauty
advertising on young women. The parody modified the original tag "Talk to your daughter
before the beauty industry does" to "... before Unilever does." Created on his own time by
Rye Clifton, a senior strategic planner at the Martin Agency, the parody garnered 98,000
views by January 24.

"The Axe campaign is a spoof and not meant to be taken literally," the company said in a
statement about the controversy. "Unilever is a large, global company with many brands in
its portfolio. Each brand's efforts is tailored to reflect the unique interests and needs of its
audience," it said. The company is "not sure" if the controversy is impacting the campaign's
Web traffic or product sales, Chadha says.

Axe appears to be unfazed by the hoopla. Wholesale distributors reported that Axe body
spray led the men's grooming category in 2007. Nearly half of the top-10 best-selling
deodorant brands for Imperial Distributors were Axe items, led by the body sprays,
according to Al Jones, senior vice president of procurement at the company, which serves
the eastern u.s. On the other hand, Dove may be feeling the sting. After growing 12.5
percent in 2005 and 10.1 percent last year, Dove sales were up less than 1 percent in the
52-week ending December 2, 2007, compared to 2006, according to Information Resources,
Inc.

The Vice video is a key part of Axe's threefold boost in online marketing in the U.S. from
$400,000 in 2006 to $1.4 million during the first 11 months of 2007, per Nielsen Online. But
that's still just a drop in the bucket of its total annual u.s. ad budget of $41 million to $43
million.

Even with such a modest price tag, "the Vice video campaign fits neatly into Axe's brand
strategy of over-the-top creativity aimed at a very specific audience," says marketing
expert Kelly. While ads for rivals Tag and Old Spice try to be hip and comically sexy, the
efforts seem "tactical and are less convincing," she says. "It looks like they are copying Axe
and makes the consumer wonder what their real identities are."

"Axe's strength is that it's so well-defined in how it acts and what it can do," says Roddy.
"Rather than trying to find common denominators among many [consumer groups], it lives
within knowing exactly who it is."

Comparison b/w AXE and SETWET

Opportunity in business is absolutely everywhere. A company hardly even known a little

over a decade ago is now a pioneer in its field. Axe deo spray has built a legacy and a
fortune on it’s commitment to remove the stink of other men’s bodies and they’re proud
of it. That’s been a starting point and since then they’ve diversified into a range of men’s
toiletries from fragrances to aftershaves. Axe has now like many companies set it’s sights
on India and for a sector that many aren’t interested in, the competition from Indian
brands has just begun and is on the way to becoming bigger.

Axe’s entry into India was based on it simply ‘testing the waters’ as such. The deodorant
industry in India had been largely unorganized. Men-the gender Axe exclusively make
products for have long relied on traditional methods to remove body odor and for many
it’s not even been an issue.

But Axe knew that by creating awareness about their brand and what it could do, they’d
be successful. It’s a mantra that has worked. Axe initially relied on a system of flooding
Indian shops with their deodorants. They simply relied on the shop owner to sell their
product to any male who was looking for a deodorant.

They weren’t novel using this method. It had and continues to be done even today by
multinational deodorant brands like Nike and Adidas but the fact that they constantly
reacted to the demand for the spray by increasing supply has helped them to become
leaders in the field.

Axe have however been hit by their pricing strategy. They have not set up an extensive
manufacturing base in India as a result of which many of their products are imported
from factories towards the east. This has pushed the prices of their spray up and it’s been
this feature that rival deo sprays, especially Indian are looking to exploit.

To combat this axe has launched a cheaper range of deo’s in India under
theRexona brand. Both Axe and Rexona are run by the Unilever group.

The Zatak brand is seen as the direct competitor to Axe which is also doing well because
it’s been pricing its products cheaper. It’s also been around for longer than Rexona in the
men’s department.

Pricing aside, there’s the question of branding and this is where Axe clearly dominates.
Their advertising campaigns are aimed at young men with catchy slogans and slightly
provocative ads which as bold as they’ve been, have been successful in pushing up their
sales.

It’s also prompted their competitors to launch their own campaigns with Zatak’s latest
campaign taking a bold dig at Axe in their own ads signifying for the first time in three
years that the smaller David is looking to slay the bigger Goliath. Whether this will
happen is something to be seen.

For Axe the way forward will require them to bring the prices of their products down and
look to set up a manufacturing hub in India.For Zatak, it’s about consolidating their
position without losing out their consumers to newer entrants
The Good
Axe is incredibly convenient to say the least. The newest version of the bottle of Axe
features a twist top. The new top manages to eliminate any "accidental spraying", the
only major complaint I'd ever had about Axe. Because of this new feature, the bottle can
be easily thrown, without care, into a gym bag to offer the best fragrance option for those
who are active. Personally, I did not bring cologne to the gym for fear of breaking the
bottle. The metal of the Axe bottle prevents this problem as well.

The multiple fragrances of Axe are a major selling point. The smell that each scent of Axe
presents is strong but not over powering, and offers a great alternative to cologne. Each
scent is unique, making it easy to have multiple favorites. Many compliments I've
received fall into the "what are you wearing?" category; any four and a half dollar bottle
that causes similar reactions to cologne is impressive. I can thank the smell of "Essence"
for saving me the 50-60 dollars that I would usually spend on cologne.

The Not So Good

The only complaint I have with Axe Deodorant Bodyspray centers around its actual
deodorant properties. While the spray deodorant is useful for a day full of relaxation, I've
found that it's odor eliminating properties struggle with anything more than simple daily
activities (exercise, warm/hot/humid days). The smell of the product still lingers, but
body odors come into the mix when Axe is the only deodorant used to produce an uneasy
aroma. Axe does offer stick deodorant, however, and I have found that using a mix of
both products offers constant body odor protection without overbearing the senses.

Let’s face it, not every guy can afford grooming products that cost $20 for a single bar of
soap. Hell, that’s six months worth of Irish Spring and frankly some guys prefer saving
the cash for other gear. We understand.
That doesn’t mean walking into the store necessary means you have to sell yourself short.
AXE’s revamped Vice lineup: Revitalizing Shower Gel, Deodorant Bodyspray and
Invisible Solid Antiperspirant are retuned to give you a better, longer-lasting scent
combined with effective protection. The mad scientists at AXE even brought in renowned
expert Ann Gottlieb to do just that. Better yet, the prices are street-wise and no guy can
deny the benefits of that.

What this means to you: Whether you admit to it or not, you know the commercials.
The ones touting of unrelenting female attention when you use AXE products. We’ll be
the first to admit it’s not going to happen - the product is a product, and what you’re
selling is yourself. That said, they’ve got some damn fine and hilarious ‘Naughty To
Nice’ commercials (one after the jump) so take a peek, pocket the cash you save and
spend it on your own gear.