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MARKETING

As a product, Pantene Pro-V is a blockbuster-the planet's best-selling shampoo, with annual sales
topping

one billion dollars. After a decade of envious growth, however, the line had become dated and
somewhat confusing. In this story, Emily Kokenge and Liz Grubow tell how the brand has been
revitalized with new graphics, packaging, and advertising based on a strategy that blends local
marketing and sales tactics with a compelling global presence.

Pantene Pro-V is the world's numberone shampoo. It is sold in virtually every country, in tens of
thousands of superstores, grocery stores, drug stores, kiosks, and tiny corner markets. Well over
one and a half million people purchase a Pantene product every day. Millions are likely to see a
Pantene advertisement on TV, in magazines, on billboards, and in other places. It is truly one of
the world's great brands.

Pantene Pro-V is also one of the most important brands for consumer goods giant Procter &
Gamble. With more than a billion dollars in annual sales, Pantene Pro-V is one of P&G's top
three brands and a consistent contributor to the company's growth. In fact, Pantene grew in
market share, sales, and volume for more than 10 consecutive years after it was relaunched by
P&G.

Competitive pressures on Pantene have grown as steadily as the brand has. The hair-care
category is crowded with competitors, and virtually everything about Pantene-its product
technology, packaging, advertising, and positioning-has been copied relentlessly. After nearly a
decade of unbridled growth, Pantene was losing momentum as it approached the year 2000.
Given its stature within P&G's brand portfolio, it was clear to everyone responsible for Pantene
that we needed an intervention to help keep the brand dynamic, vital, and in the lead.

Consequently, it was with a sense of urgency that Pantene underwent a major redesign in 2000.
A multi-billion-dollar global brand was on the line. Hundreds of careers were at stake. Hundreds
of stakeholders, with often-competing interests, would have to be aligned. And a small brand
design team, based in Cincinnati, was given the charge to redesign the best-selling hair-care
brand in the world. This is our story.

A global brand waiting to be born

Pantene Pro-V began as a tiny shampoo brand, launched in Europe by Swiss drug company
Hoffman-La Roche in 1947. The name Pantene was a reference to the original product
technology-pro-vitamin B-5, or panthenol. RichardsonVicks acquired Pantene in 1983. Two
years later, when P&G acquired Richardson-Vicks, Pantene became part of the Procter &
Gamble portfolio.

It wasn't until the late 1980s that P&G began to focus on Pantene's potential. The company's
marketers noticed something important. Although Pantene was a very small brand, with barely
more than $100 million in sales, it already had an international presence and an extremely loyal
consumer base. This convinced P&G that Pantene had the potential to be a major global brand,
and it was with that ambitious goal in mind that Pantene was relaunched in 1993.

From the beginning, Pantene signaled P&G's future as a global marketer. To relaunch Pantene,
the products were reformulated as Pantene ProV, breakthrough advertising was created under the
banner of "hair so healthy it shines," and an innovative brand identity and package design was
created. The design for Pantene's Pro-V brought a look of authority and efficacy to mass-market
hair care and communicated the brand's premium beauty positioning. Taiwan became the lead
market for the brand's relaunch, and a successful business was built in the Far East.

Within 18 months of the establishment of this model, Pantene expanded into more than 20
countries with a presence in every major region of the world, establishing itself as the market
leader again and again. By 1995, Pantene was the best-selling hair-care brand in the world, with
a lineup that included shampoos, conditioners, and styling products for all types of hair.

Organizing for global leadership

At the same time that Pantene was becoming one of P&G's first truly global brands, it was
teaching its new owner how to compete and win on a worldwide scale. The brand had been built
on fundamentals that would soon become foundations for other global market leaders in P&G's
brand lineup: understanding consumer needs globally and locally, creating brand equities that
could be owned in markets all over the world, and producing standard-setting advertising that
worked with consumers from Texas to Tokyo.

P&G had applied these fundamentals in one category after another and, by the late 1990s, the
company had nearly a dozen global brands that were number one or number two worldwide, and
at least as many more with potential to join the elite billion-dollar-brand club.

Still, P&G's approach to global brand management was far from optimized. Multiple layers of
decision makers were involved in virtually every major decision about a big brand-decisions
surrounding the brand team, regional organizations, country organizations, and key functions,
including product development, product supply, and sales. Getting decisions made and
implemented was a timeconsuming, expensive, and generally frustrating process. For the design
team, the process often meant that well-conceived designs were dated and less distinct by the
time they finally appeared on store shelves.

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Nov 30, 2008
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Procter & Gamble is giving Pantene a new gloss as the company tries once again to recharge the underperforming
haircare brand.

The new push, estimated to be in the $100 million range, stars former beauty editor and TV celeb Stacy London and
touts an upgrade in silicon technology that translates to stronger, shinier hair. Pricing, however, will remain the same
as P&G positions Pantene as a value buy that's just as good as salon brands, but less expensive.

The campaign is the latest attempt to jump-start the brand, which has repeatedly been singled out as a laggard in
P&G's North American beauty business. Most recently, Pantene was blamed for making P&G miss the usual 5%
annual beauty growth mark. In an earnings call with analysts this April, CEO A.G. Lafley attributed much of that
decline to last spring's failed restaging of the brand. Called Parthenon, that campaign, also via Grey, New York,
called for organizing the brand's many SKUs into 18 easily identifiable "benefit-themed" collections, including ones for
healthy, colored and treated hair. Aimed at minimizing the confusion, the strategy ultimately failed.

Now P&G is trying a different approach. A teaser campaign which launched mid-November directed consumers to
Secrettogreathair.com and sampling inserts inside major Sunday newspapers heralded the brand's latest positioning.

Pantene North America brand manager Seth Klugherz said the campaign is the biggest launch for the brand since
the 2000 restaging of Pantene as Pantene Pro-V. Though he declined to delineate a spend, he noted that, "We have
always been the leader in spending and we will very much continue to do that." Nielsen Monitor-Plus data shows that
P&G spent $203 million on U.S. measured media for Pantene in 2007, excluding online, and $114 million through
September of this year.

Klugherz said the campaign drew its insight from research testing among consumers, in which P&G found that the
"gold standard" in haircare for many was salon brands. And so, in a blind test of 3,600 salon users, P&G asked the
women to compare the new formulation to salon brands. (Seven out of 10 participants voted for Pantene.) Marketing
research firm TNS conducted the trials.

Klugherz said that while previous ads for Pantene touched upon the value approach, it was never more overt than
now. And P&G is comfortable with that messaging. "Consumers will tell you that value is not defined as cheap. It's the
mix of something that works really well at a price that is not ridiculous," he said.

Meanwhile, rivals Tresemmé and Suave have already adopted similar tactics. Tresemmé, which is owned by Alberto-
Culver, has begun airing new commercials for its Flawless Curls product. The ad, via Campbell Mithun, Minneapolis,
shows a woman getting her hair primed at a salon. Her friend, however, achieves the same results with a bottle of
Tresemmé Flawless Curls at home. Tresemmé U.S. marketing director Rob Keen said the positioning has worked
well for the company thus far. "Tresemmé is the No. 1 styling brand and No. 5 haircare brand in the U.S. and
continues to enjoy double-digit growth year-on-year," he said. Tagline: "Stylized curls that look like a splurge, at a
price that feels like a steal."

Unilever has been running ads explaining that women can get salon-quality hair with Suave's professional haircare
line. "There are a breadth of brands that are talking in similar language, about this idea of salon quality for less, but
we are quite comfortable with that because with Suave, we know we own that message," said David Rubin, Unilever's
U.S. haircare marketing director, adding the brand is now in 60% of all U.S. households.

Despite the competition, analysts like Sanford Bernstein's Ali Dibadj say Pantene has been the victim of confused
marketing and too many extensions, but this will move the brand in the right direction. "It's the first step in this whole
process," said John Faucher of JPMorgan.

* 

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by Kerry Capell

In recent years, Unilever (UL), the world's second-largest consumer-products company, has been
overshadowed and outmaneuvered by nimbler and more aggressive rivals, including market
leader Proctor & Gamble (PG). But now the once-sleepy Anglo-Dutch maker of Lipton tea,
Dove soap, Knorr soups, and Surf detergent is challenging its Cincinnati-based competitor in a
category the latter practically owns: antidandruff shampoo.

Sounds a bit mundane, but the battle against flaky scalps is very big business. Analysts figure
antidandruff formulas account for half of the annual $40 billion global shampoo market. And the
biggest opportunity lies in emerging markets, where antidandruff shampoos are considered
premium products and cost more than so-called beauty brands such as P&G's Pantene.

Head & Shoulders, also from P&G, is a $1.8 billion product line and by far the leader in the so-
called BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India, and China, as well as elsewhere in Asia. Indeed,
analysts say Unilever may be as much as 40 years behind P&G in some of these markets. Now
the company is fighting back with a surprising weapon: an antidandruff shampoo called Clear
that wasn't created in a Western research lab, but rather in the developing world.
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The shampoo is already gaining in share. The new, faster Unilever blasted it out to seven new
markets in just six months last year, racking up sales of $367 million. In the Philippines, long
considered P&G territory, Head & Shoulders was unchallenged in the antidandruff category until
Clear launched in July, 2007. Five months later, Unilever's shampoo had overtaken Head &
Shoulders to grab 15.6% of the market.

In China, where Unilever is a much smaller player than P&G, with total sales for all products of
around $1.2 billion, Clear has gone from zero to 3.3% market share in less than a year. "P&G
had a free run for a long time," says Seokhee Won, global vice-president for Clear. Now, he says,
the product's rapid success has "woken up the big sleeping giant."

Perhaps the biggest surprise is that Unilever now aims to bring Clear to big Western markets in
Europe and the U.S. In the world of consumer products, that would make it an anomaly²
Unilever's first global brand developed and launched first in emerging markets. "We are not just
exporting products from the U.S. or Europe to developing markets," says Harish Manwani, head
of Unilever's Asian and African businesses.

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First formulated at Unilever research centers in Shanghai and Bangkok, Clear was introduced in
1972 in just four markets: India, Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia. It remained confined largely
to Southeast Asia for more than three decades until Unilever decided to harness it as a potential
global rival to Head & Shoulders.

It's an approach that wouldn't have been possible without the ambitious restructuring program
kicked off by Unilever Chief Executive Patrick Cescau three years ago. He ditched
underperforming brands, divested Unilever's frozen-foods business, and stripped out layers of
bureaucracy, including half the ranks of top management, that had kept the company lagging for
years behind fleeter-footed rivals.

Under Cescau's "One Unilever" plan, unnecessary complexity was removed. Brands now rely on
one formulation, one packaging design, and one marketing strategy, instead of the fragmented
approach of the past. Local managers no longer run the autonomous fiefdoms where they were
responsible for everything from marketing and sales to running factories and back-office
operations.

Instead, these functions have been largely centralized, eliminating duplication and allowing for
faster decision-making and global economies of scale.



 

  

Equally important, emerging markets, where Unilever historically has been strong, were made a
higher priority. To ensure products meet the needs of local consumers around the world, nearly
one-third of the company's home and personal products brand development resources now are
based in the developing world.

The changes are paying off. Unilever posted its best annual results in five years on Feb. 7, with
sales up 5.5%, to $15 billion, and net profits of nearly $8 billion. "The transformation of
Unilever continues apace," Cescau says. Unilever's London-traded shares are up 12% since a
year ago.

What's more, developing markets now account for nearly 45% of revenues, up from 38% three
years ago. "Developing and emerging markets, which are expected to grow at 10% per year, will
account for more than 50% of sales by the end of 2008," predicts Jan Meijer, an analyst at
Amsterdam brokerage Theodoor Gilissen.

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Cescau's new approach has made it possible for Unilever to roll out small regional brands such
as Clear quickly in high-growth markets. The company put more resources behind the product
and tweaked the formulation with input from labs around the world. Although Clear contains
zinc pyrithione, the same active ingredient as Head & Shoulders, Unilever claims its shampoo is
more effective thanks to a patented technology that helps the zinc bind better to the scalp.

The biggest innovation, however, may be in marketing. Unilever has set up hair-care centers in
malls from Beijing to Moscow where shoppers can pop in and get their scalp assessed using an
"i-scope"²a small camera with a powerful microscope that's hooked up to a computer. "Even
people who think they don't have dandruff are shocked to discover they actually do," says
Unilever's Won. "This is our most successful strategy so far, because seeing is believing."

Aiming to keep the brand's image stylish and aspirational, Unilever also has relied on good old-
fashioned celebrity endorsements. Korean pop star and actor Rain hawks the brand across Asia,
and his Clear ad is one of the more popular on YouTube (GOOG), with nearly 25,000 downloads.


  
 

To reinforce the upscale image, Unilever took the risky step of pricing Clear at a 10% premium
to Head & Shoulders, which is already the most expensive mass market shampoo in most
emerging markets. So far, the strategy is working: Not only has Unilever avoided a price war
with P&G, but by grabbing the top of the market, it has given the shampoo a certain cachet.

That doesn't mean Unilever is targeting only the wealthy, though. It offers the shampoo in
individual sachet sizes as well as in larger bottles, a strategy it successfully deployed in India
several years ago. "We sell to both the very rich and the very poor," Cescau says. And soon that
may include consumers in the U.S. and Europe.

Capell is a senior writer in ±


's London bureau .

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The body regularly sloughs off dead skin cells, including those from the scalp, every 24
days. Dandruff is the abnormally rapid shedding of skin cells from the scalp, resulting in
small, whitish-gray flakes of skin on hair and clothes. This flaking is usually
accompanied by itchiness and dryness.

 
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Dryness resulting from frequent hair washing, blow-drying, exposure to chemicals in
colourants, styling products and even shampoos is the primary cause of dandruff. A
number of other factors such as improper nutrition, poor hygiene, daily hair care habits,
and emotional stress also contribute to make a person more prone to dandruff.

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Dandruff is a recurring problem that can only be managed with regular use of an
effective anti-dandruff shampoo. Ordinary shampoos do not get to the source of the
problem and simply superficially was away flakes caused by dandruff.
 
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Clear is an anti-dandruff shampoo that has a patented Zinc Vitanol complex that stops
and prevents dandruff from recurring. It is the only anti-dandruff shampoo endorsed by
the International Academy of Cosmetic Dermatology (IACD).

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Clear stops dandruff by nourishing the scalp with its unique combination of ingredients,
namely:
Amino Acids ± the building blocks of proteins, nourishes scalp and hair
Vitamin E ± an anti-oxidant that supports the body¶s natural defenses and fights free
radicals for healthy scalp and hair
Sunflower Oil ± retains moisture in the scalp and provides a protective barrier from
recurrence of dandruff.


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ï removes dandruff
ï nourishes scalp
 ï relieves dryness
ï prevents hair breakage
ï cools and refreshes scalp
ï prevents itchiness

Yes. Apart from the fact they have a Unisex range of shampoos, they also have a range
that¶s esp formulated for men.

You can also check out the Kikay Girl¶s first-hand experience in using the shampoo. As
for me, I have yet to give it a go. I¶ll let you know in a week or two or when I can see any
definite changes on my hair and scalp. I currently have the variants,

 

  
, plus the 
  

  
. I already gave the   

variant to teh boyfriend to try out.

On a related note, here¶s a great CLEAR Ad I found today: ³Remove to get 10% off
Clear anti-dandruff shampoo´. I happen to think this is a really awesome marketing
strategy.

If you want a little dose on fashion, check out the Black Fashion Show held during
Clear¶s launch in Manila, Philippines.

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