The soap market in India is a high-penetration (98 per cent) category with a multitude of brands. The market is estimated at Rs 10,000 crore. Lifebuoy is the top soap brand, in terms of market share, followed by Lux, Santoor, Dettol and Godrej No.1, in that order.

The two major segments in this market are beauty and health. Beauty is the bigger segment at Rs 5,000 crore whereas health, at Rs 3,000 crore, is the faster growing segment. Other segments are herbal/ayurvedic and medicated soaps. In terms of prices, the soap segments are:

Mass: Lifebuoy, Godrej No.1

Popular: Hamam, Medimix, Vivel, Lux

Premium: Dove, Fiama Di Wills, Mysore Sandal

Super Premium: Mysore Sandal Millennium Soap

Liril as a brand is still pretty prominent in the minds of the consumers in their thirties and forties. The brand acquired a celebrated status with pathbreaking advertising and PR around it. Launched in 1975, in its earlier years the soap was positioned on the platform of freshness from its lime ingredient. The visual cues of a waterfall, a woman bathing under it and a signature tune, were used to stand out. Over the years, while the setting changed, the positioning and the depiction of the protagonist playfully enjoying the experience, escaping reality and forgetting everything else, were maintained.

Consequently it had garnered 14 per cent of the market during its peak and was among the top three along with Lifebuoy and Lux.

Its journey since then has, however, been chequered. In 2005 as a result of loss of market share, Liril was re-launched as Liril 2000, a skin-care soap for the family. The positioning was drawn from an international product in the Unilever stable, Lever2000.

The feeling was that freshness had become a generic benefit in the soap category. The brand had experimented with variants and forms, shower gel in 1994, a cologne variant in 1996, Liril Rainfresh in 1999, and even an orange and icy blue variant followed by an aloe vera and lemon introduction, all with little success. The brand continued to slide in market share and also in the minds of the consumer. Price-wise it continues to be in the premium soap category and competes with the likes of Dove, Fiama-di Wills, Lux International.

History of the brand Liril was conceived of by a group of young managers from HLL, as it was then called, and Lintas, which was instructed to create a freshness soap in the premium price segment. Their first attempt was a blue soap with the promise of fresh mountain breeze. This idea did not work too well in research. They then developed a green marbled soap with a lemon fragrance. The brand was launched in 1975 as a response to research which showed that the only time available to the housewife was in the bath. She would use that time to relax and try and escape into a world of fantasy. Lintas, the advertising agency for Liril, had to come up with a creative execution for escaping into fantasy and it came up with ‘a girl bathing under a waterfall’.

Karen Lunel, an airhostess with Air India, was chosen as the first-ever model for Liril.

The advertisement was a very bold execution for the times but was a roaring success. The Liril girl became an embodiment of an exciting life escaping the mundane and establishing the brand as an aspirational possession for the housewife.

Liril over the years has come up with multiple product innovations such as a shower gel in the early 1990s, a blue variant called Liril Rain Fresh in 1999, which was re-launched in April 2002, Liril Icy Cool Mint Fresh and in 2004 the Liril Orange Splash. The brand today has negligible market share and saw a steep comedown from being the number three in the soaps category. In its latest avatar, the Liril 2000 seems to be aimed at men, with a commercial which shows a man using the soap and the claim of soft and healthy skin. All the launches in different product categories under the brand have failed. Currently it has a market share of less than 1 per cent in soaps. However, Unilever understands that in the current fragmented and highly competitive market of soaps, building a new brand is extremely tough. In the last 20 years, no other new brand, besides Dove, has had significant success in this category. It would, therefore, like to revive the brand to be a significant player again.

Vishwadeep Kuila, an alumnus of IIM-A, runs a marketing consultancy, Brand Vectors, in Chennai. This is a case prepared by the author and not an industry review. Figures used are from secondary research sources and are only inputs for respondents to devise strategy. The author does not claim to have first-hand information from the company mentioned here.

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