Chapter 14 discusses the future of marketing in the context of the post-COVID scenario. COVID has disrupted the business world in an almost unprecedented manner. In the hair removing category in Pakistan, Veet stands as the category leader with 78% brand awareness and a Brand Used Most Often (BUMO) score of 35%. Veet was obviously affected because consumers were homebound due to the lockdown and could not visit the parlor. The Veet brand team came up with its Bring Your Parlor Home campaign, encouraging the consumer to stay safe by avoiding parlors and instead bring the parlor home with Veet’s hair removal products. The TVC based campaign starred the famous actress Mahira Khan and achieved tremendous success. The more important lesson for businesses all over Pakistan and even abroad is that in times of uncertainty and disruption, a business can always think of out-of-box solutions and regain and even enhance its market share by innovating its plans (Dr. Aamir Khan, Case Advisor).
2020 was a tough year for consumers and businesses. The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted traditional shopping practices as most consumers shifted towards integrating health and wellness as part of their daily lifestyle. Amidst this changing routine and a growing emphasis on health and sanitization, depilation lost its relevance to consumers. While brands belonging to the cleaning and disinfectant category enjoyed boosts in their demand, others had to find a way to remain significant to their consumers.
With a rich history in consumer durable goods dating back to over 200 years, Reckitt is a British multinational with an operational presence in 60 different markets across the world. One of their core values is a focus on consistent product innovation. This has inspired the company to consistently develop research-backed products and communications to connect and resonate with its audience. The company organizes its products in three broad categories which are health, hygiene and nutrition. With the emergence of Covid-19 and subsequent shifts in consumption patterns, a number of these categories and power brands had to develop fresh ways to establish meaningful connection with their target market. Some categories continued to enjoy a natural demand whereas others had to be reinvented in order to stay relevant.
Depilatories refer to chemical based hair removal solutions. Veet, with a history of more than 100 years, is a global pioneer in depilation category and the preferred choice of more than 300 million women worldwide. When looking at the local context, according to Nielsen Retail Audit FY 2020, the worth of depilatory category in Pakistan stands at Rs 3.7 billion. The category can be classified into 3 key formats: creams, lotions and cold wax strips. Veet enjoys the status of being the leader in local depilatory category, with a market value share of 47%. Additionally, it was the only brand which was involved in active marketing. Other significant players of the category included Anne French and EU, both of whom were not very active at marketing at that time. According to Humayun Farooq (Marketing Director, Reckitt, Pakistan), “Veet has come a long way from being a brand that only had a functional positioning to a beauty-based brand that empowers women.” The brand had to leverage all its prowess to reposition itself and reaffirm its relevance in a post-Covid world.
Even before the pandemic struck, Veet has always embodied a strong purpose of enabling women to use the brand the way they deem best. With a keen understanding of the notion that everybody is different, with unique needs and body structures, the choice to look after themselves must also be a personal choice for each woman. Through their extensive range of product offerings, Veet promises to make it easier for women to stay on top of their depilation needs depending on their skin type, style and mood. Since the pandemic brought a range of restrictions pertaining to hygiene, movement and socialization, there was an added parameter to be considered by Veet when innovating to stay relevant to its target audience.
Most brands, the world over, centered their Covid-specific campaigns around considerations pertaining to hygiene, society and reassurance to communities. Since context is a vital key in brand communications and appropriateness always matters, designing a campaign whilst keeping the lockdown and its associated factors in mind was an additional challenge for the brand team. Veet took on the responsibility of developing a campaign that would make it relevant to its target audience in the current world reality.
The brand team came up with the Bring Your Parlor Home campaign, which kicked off in January 2021, to achieve this objective. According to Anam Shafaat, Senior Brand Manager – Veet, “Being a leader in the depilation category, Veet is constantly working on innovative strategies to increase its penetration. During COVID, we realized that there was potential in generating trial amongst parlor-goers who were homebound due to lockdown related restrictions”. Thus, through the campaign, they devised a unique way to establish their brand’s relevance and remind women that despite being in the midst of a pandemic, they shouldn’t forget their wellness and self-care. The campaign offered consumers the benefit of staying safe by avoiding parlors and instead bringing the parlor home with Veet’s hair removal products. By using Veet, they could achieve parlor like results of silky-smooth skin at home.
In 2019, the Beauty and Personal Care (BPC) category in Pakistan was estimated to be worth over Rs. 240 billion and it has continued an upward trajectory with the increased focus spurred on by Covid-19. A number of trends have been observed in the way consumers currently use BPC products; chief among them has been an increased emphasis on Naturals and Sustainability, Personalization, and Holistic Wellness. These trends were well integrated in the brand’s imagery statements as it enjoyed “trustworthy”, “stylish”, “never compromises on quality” and “provides safety to my sensitive skin areas” associations. As the category leader which has the Brand Used Most Often (BUMO) score of 35% and an awareness level of 78%, Veet enjoys the top position in depilation category. The challenge for the brand was to capitalize on the current trends in category coupled with the pandemic induced shifts in consumer behaviour to re-establish its relevance. Specifically, through the Bring Your Parlor Home campaign, Veet was aiming to grow its sales compared to previous year on both the national and regional level by generating trials amongst parlor-goers. It also wanted to increase the preference of hair removal creams amongst consumers.
The brand team had to design a concrete strategy in order to achieve their campaign’s objectives. Covid-19 had brought immense stress amongst women, as they were not only homebound but also had to tend to all their family members being home throughout the day due to the lockdown. This caused them additional mental and emotional stress as they were forced to deal with being at home whilst simultaneously managing the house chores, work and family. Since the consumers were reluctant to interact with external forces for fear of contracting Covid-19 and a government-imposed lockdown prevented businesses, shops and parlors from operating regularly, there was a clear opportunity identified to capitalize and base Veet’s campaign on bringing your parlor home! The brand message was to be communicated via a series of dedicated videos reassuring consumers that despite parlors being closed they need not worry because they still have the option to embrace beauty practices at home. Through the campaign Veet encouraged its consumers, who were homebound, to integrate personal wellness in their lifestyle and daily routine. The idea was to remind them to take time out for themselves and dedicate at least one day of the week to their personal relaxation and grooming (when they can use Veet as well) so that they can unwind and get ready for the week to come.
In developing the Bring Your Parlor Home campaign a synergistic model of work was applied, in that input was taken from all the important cross-functional teams which work behind the making of a successful campaign. These included the creative, media, digital, PR, trade and production teams. Such synergy ensures that each team not only has a say but a sense of ownership of the message delivered through the campaign. Subsequently, everyone was not only involved but was also able to apply and properly adapt the message on their respective platforms.
Being a global brand, Veet has an opportunity to learn from numerous markets, alongside an availability of several global communications to take inspiration from. India had adopted a similar messaging stream where it encouraged parlor-goers to try Veet which was received positively and had allowed the brand to perform well. Keeping those insights in mind, the brand team decided to implement these learnings in Pakistan and make changes as per the context of our local market. For instance, the word ‘salon’ which is used commonly in India was replaced by the more familiar sounding ‘parlor’ for the Pakistani version of the campaign. A storyboard was subsequently developed for the campaign shoot to be executed.
The campaign was rolled out on TV with a dedicated television commercial prominently featuring Mahira Khan, Pakistan’s biggest female superstar and the face of the brand. It was heavily promoted across various channels for generating consumer awareness and product trial.
In the awareness stage, the goal of an advertisement is to make the consumer cognizant of an innovation that they may not be previously familiar with.
In the trial stage, brands try and communicate in a manner which prompts consumers to give the product a try and become a part of their purchase decision.
With the Bring Your Parlor Home campaign, the brand team also employed a full funnel approach on digital to ensure a customized message is delivered at each step of the online consumer journey. In addition, Veet made use of relevant key opinion leaders to drive consumer education and trial.
When brands deploy full-funnel strategy, it guarantees that regardless of the buyer readiness, there is relevant promotional message applicable to their stage of the buyer decision journey nudging them towards purchase. The key stages on the funnel include Awareness, Consideration and Conversion.
An opinion leader is categorized as a person who has established an authentic relationship with their target audience built on trust which is then leveraged to influence consumer’s behaviour.
Veet also took advantage of the campaign timings and introduced occasion-based offers, where on every purchase, a consumer could win items essential for these festivities. This approach further cemented Veet’s relevance, tying it to events like Eid and wedding season, when there is a higher likelihood of women visiting parlors. Bring Your Parlor Home campaign also had an in-store element to it with bundles such as “2 X Veet hair removal creams + 1 X Veet face wax strips” on offer. These helped position the brand as a “DIY at home parlor solution” and reinforced the personal relaxation and grooming objective of the campaign. Various in-store promoters and visibility tools were also deployed to ensure consumer’s message recall at the point of purchase.
Bring Your Parlor Home campaign turned out to be a tremendous success for Veet as it achieved an overall 43% national growth versus previous year and 45% consumers showed an increased preference for hair removal creams.
This success is a clear indication of the fact that when correct assessment of consumer and environmental needs are done when forming the basis of a promotion, then such a campaign is bound to triumph on its pre-determined objectives. The brand team diligently did an environment scan to ensure they adapt the message keeping local market’s contextual relevance at the forefront of their communication. For major macro-environment disruptions, it is imperative that existing brand strategies are re-evaluated. This was achieved such that both the communication as well as value proposition were updated according to consumer’s usage to make the optimal impact on their decision making.
Moving forward, as more brands in the depilation category start copying Veet’s marketing strategies, the onus would lay on the brand to continue to evolve its strategies and come up with something prominent that allows it to stay relevant to its target market.
Questions to stimulate conversation on the case
- Watch the advertisement for Bring Your Parlor Home campaign (YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqCMD8dL728 ). Determine how this advertisement specifically built and integrated awareness and trial stages in its communication?
- Research and identify some of the key-opinion leader / beauty influencers who may impact consumers with the purchase of beauty products. Why do you deem them influential?
- Analyze the digital promotional strategy deployed by Veet, linking it with the full funnel approach in communication. (match each stage with the message).
- Design and suggest some of the creative ways/promotional strategies that would allow Veet to evolve and stay atop the depilation category.
Link and media
- Veet Website ( https://www.reckitt.com/us/brands/veet/)
- Euromonitor(https://www.euromonitor.com/beauty-and-personal-care-in-pakistan/report )
- Mintel(https://www.mintel.com/blog/beauty-market-news/covid-19-increases-demand-for-safe-and-reliable-bpc-products )
- Dawn News (https://www.dawn.com/news/1622266 )