Garnier Black Naturals: Now no one will know when

you color your greys!

Anjuri Jain
Source: WARC Prize for Asian Strategy, Entrant, 2014
Downloaded from WARC

This case study describes how Garnier Colour Naturals, a creme-based hair colouring brand, disrupted
its category in India by pointing out the negative aspects of rival powder-based products.

Users had previously been unwilling to switch from powder to creme due to the perceived price
premium.
In response, Garnier tweaked its product design and communications to emphasise that powder
and henna tended to produce a too-black, 'wig-like' effect.
Ads also highlighted the fact that the Garnier creme gave a more naturally-youthful effect.
Garnier Black Naturals exceeded its targets by gaining a 1.5% market share within the first five
months of launch.

Anjuri Jain

Campaign details
Brand owner: L'Oreal
Lead agency: Publicis
Brand: Garnier
Country: India
Industry Hair care
Channels used: Newspapers, Outdoor, out-of-home, Packaging and design , Point-of-purchase, in-store, Print
- general, unspecified, Television
Media budget: 5 - 10 million

Executive summary
This case study describes how, even though the crème colour category had gradually gained popularity
amongst Indians over the years, it still remained underpenetrated by Garnier – the mother of India's leading
crème hair colour brand, Garnier Colour Naturals. With the ambitious task of attracting more and more
consumers into the crème colour fold, Garnier realised it would have to fundamentally create disruption in the
market, and reposition the category as well as its competitors.

Research revealed that the competing category, powder dyes, was under-delivering on some parameters, and
that some were more important than others. Consumer behaviour suggested that some consumers were
accustomed to, and continued living with these problems for lack of a better option, while non-users remained
hesitant to enter the crème category altogether because of the premium it commanded.

It was up to the market leader to urge these consumers to consider the crème colour category, by reconfiguring
all aspects of the category basics – pricing, product features, people and proposition.

The product design and communications explored the many negatives of powder dye usage, and used one in
particular to develop a brand that could potentially change the way India reacts to powder dyes and crème
colours in the near future.

Market background and cultural context

The hair colour market construct: Henna, powder dyes and crème

The hair colour market in India largely consists of henna/mehndi, powder colours and crème colours, with
volume shares of 28%, 45% and 15% respectively. (Source: AC Nielsen Track, Dec 2013.) The henna segment
is largely unbranded and dirt-cheap, powder dyes is a mass market, while the crème colours category is
premium.

Godrej Expert leads the powder dye market; a mass brand priced at Rs.10/- a pack. The crème colour market is
led by L'Oréal's premium brand, Garnier Colour Naturals, priced at Rs 160/- per pack. Over the years, other
brands have mushroomed in this segment, such as Livon, Color Mate, Indica and Streax, all priced upwards of
Rs 80/-. (Source: Market Survey, Dec 2013.)

The market opportunity: The great chasm

The construct of the market presented an opportunity for Garnier. The huge gap between the two hair colour
segments essentially meant that if any powder-dye user wished to upgrade to a crème colour brand, he or she
would have to shell-out a large premium.

This was a significant roadblock in the growth potential of crème colours, but it was an easy one for Garnier to
resolve. So they did. They worked out an accessible/affordable price point of Rs.39/- a pack, for a new product
launch.

Having done the product-pricing bit, Garnier was now faced with the larger task: identifying the audience and
their core motivation – the purpose of the brand.

Identifying the consumer: Between a rock and a hard place

There was a set consumer group that used powder dyes and there was a particular kind of crème colour-user
set. Then there was a vacuum in the middle created by those people who weren't opting for either format
because of their corresponding negatives; namely that powder dyes are too cheap/downmarket and so must be
harmful to the hair, and crème colours are expensive and therefore too indulgent to even try.

Garnier explored this dilemma further, in order to identify a need gap that they could fill with this new product
launch.

Objectives
Garnier's quantitative objective for its new product launch was to gain a 1% market share within the first five
months of launch.

Insight and strategic thinking

To identify the purpose of our new launch, we first needed to examine and understand India's peculiar
relationship with the hair colour category.

Hair colour in India: A culture of preserving or retaining youth

Cross-country learnings, cultural observation and research confirmed that while salt-and-pepper or grey hair
may be chic and cool in most western societies today, in India grey hair is an inevitable and embarrassing sign
of ageing – a sign that you are losing your grip on youth and a symbol of the gradual demise of your 'prime' or
'peak' years.

This explains why the Indian hair colour category is consumed predominantly by those over 35 years of age for
hiding grey hair. (Source: Client Data, Dec 2013.)

Anything to hide the grey: Powder dye woes

The majority of this consumer set (from early middle-age) uses powder dyes and henna to cover grey hair, but it
comes at a cost. The powder dye format has many negatives that they have to live with – the mess of mixing the
powder, the dripping on forehead and clothes, damage to the hair, fake-looking pitch-black hair, etc. (Source:
Qualitative Research Commissioned by Client.)

Dye and tell: When you use powder dye, it shows

Most of the problems with the powder dye format mentioned above are ruled out with the inherent superiority of
the crème format. But if this basic format superiority was good enough, then the crème colour penetration
numbers would simply be far higher in India and, of course, they aren't.

To be able to make a dent with our new crème colour launch, Garnier needed to come up with something more
compelling to offer the hesitant consumer waiting to try crème colours. The answer lay in the biggest drawback
of powder dye usage – the way the hair looked after colouring.

It is common knowledge that powder dyes result in fake-looking, blacker-than-black, unnatural, wig-like hair. In
fact, fake-looking hair is a tell-tale sign of powder dye usage. It was this wig-like, 'unnatural' powder dye look
that led us to explore the world of 'natural' for the new Garnier launch.
The culture of 'natural': Jumping on the bandwagon

In recent years, the word 'natural' has acquired a life of its own in India. It's used colloquially to such a large
extent that you could easily mistake it for an Indian word.

The word is a compelling force in Indian culture and marketing: natural as a source description for ingredients,
natural as a way of processing, natural as a sign of purity and potency, natural as a symbol of simplicity, natural
as a premium descriptor, natural as healthy, natural as sustainable, natural as a rarity, natural as the opposite of
artifice and natural as a synonym for untouched or preserved. Look around and you will find that 'natural' has
become a philosophy.

Applying this 'natural' philosophy to the hair colour category, we realised that 'natural-looking hair colour' would
signal an effortless preservation of youth, making it an attractive proposition: 'I want to cover my grey hair and
look younger, but I want to do it without anyone knowing about it'.

Hence, we decided to deliver an effortless preservation of youth through 'natural-looking' hair colour, by getting
as close to the customer's natural hair colour as possible, with our new launch.

Naturally black: The flavour of all Indian seasons

Since 'natural' was at the heart of our offering, we had to choose the appropriate colour shades, too. Naturally,
we went with a family of blacks.

On average, the natural Indian hair colour is either some shade of black or a darker hue of brown. The need to
retain this original hair colour whilst covering grey hair is even reflected in the contribution of blacks and browns
to Garnier hair colour sales, which stands at almost 70%. (Source: Client Data.)

Hence 'Garnier Black Naturals' was born.

Garnier black naturals: Proof in the product

The R&D department at Garnier worked on this brief of 'natural-looking hair' colour for close to a year. And it
paid off. They arrived at a formula enriched with the goodness of almond oil and black tea extracts, which
resulted in natural-looking hair colour as well as 100% coverage of grey hair.

So Garnier Black Naturals (GBN) was launched as a modern and superior alternative to low-quality, traditional
hair-colouring options available on the market in three shades – Deep Black, Original Black and Brown Black –
ensuring that you get to colour your greys as close as possible to your natural hair shade.

The guiding product and positioning thought was to debunk the outdated ritual of using powder dyes, and to
make fake-looking, wig-like, blacker-than-black hair a thing of the past.

Implementation, including creative and media development

Naturally, through our ambition to give hesitant consumers a reason to upgrade to crème colours, our creative
execution was focused on 'natural-looking' hair colour and its (delightful) consequences.

The creative concept of 'mistaken identity' was employed to bring this to life. To elaborate, whilst colouring hair
with powder dye makes you stand out like a sore thumb by making it obvious that you've just coloured your hair,
Garnier Black Naturals will help you blend in and appear as natural as possible.

So natural that you might not have coloured your hair at all. So natural, in fact, that you could get mistaken for
someone else – someone younger even.

Not only did we shift the focus from the embarrassment of the tell-tale signs of the powder-dyed, wig-like look,
we emphasised the core purpose of the hair-colouring ritual – ie looking younger and enjoying it.

Even though we were introducing an accessible offering into the crème colour market, we still wanted to
maintain the Garnier feel in the visual language and set-up. So we used the context of a modern Indian urban
family to tell our story for the north Indian market, one where a young father gets mistaken for his son and a
suburban mother gets mistaken for her daughter – all because of their naturally black hair!

Performance against objectives

Success in sales

Garnier Black Naturals exceeded its targets by gaining a 1.5% market share within the first five months of
launch. (Source: AC Nielsen Track, May 2014.)

Such success is noteworthy when benchmarked against a cross-category example, such as the success of Olay
3-in-1; an affordable fairness cream from the house of Olay. This new variant had gained a 1.3% market share
within the first six months of its launch (source: AC Nielsen Track April 2014) and this in a category that has the
highest penetration and media spends in the country.

Lessons learned
Consumer truth often trumps price incentives

The lesson learnt was that getting people to adopt a new product or to break an old habit isn't simply a question
of pricing strategy. More often than not, a unique point of view or human truth can create a meaning far greater
than a low price-entry.

The competition has a lot to teach you

Going back to the drawing board in terms of how a category or brand has been consumed for years, and the
associations therein, can throw considerable light on its future direction. In this case, we learnt that the way one
category was consumed and perceived helped to shape the direction of the other.
© Copyright WARC 2014
WARC Ltd.
Americas: 2233 Wisconsin Ave NW, Suite 535, Washington, DC 20007, United States - Tel: +1 202 778 0680
APAC: 20A Teck Lim Road, 088391, Singapore - Tel: +65 3157 6200
EMEA: 85 Newman Street, London, United Kingdom, W1T 3EU - Tel: +44 (0)20 7467 8100

www.warc.com

All rights reserved including database rights. This electronic file is for the personal use of authorised users based at the subscribing
company's office location. It may not be reproduced, posted on intranets, extranets or the internet, e-mailed, archived or shared electronically
either within the purchaser's organisation or externally without express written permission from Warc.