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The Fatty Fight

The funny thing about the 'total fatty matter' soap protest is that it's not funny enough.

By T.R. Vivek

Obsessing about fat

The three-letter word 'fat' is sending Americans into convulsions. The country's obese are up in protest. They want to sue McDonald's for turning them into fatsos, and lean observers can't stop laughing. Perfect stuff for the 'Onion', which specialises in high satire, to peel away at.

The Indian market, some think, is far too dull to lend itself to such market drama. When consumers feel cheated, they just sit and sulk. They don't gang up, form a forum, stage demonstrations, coin witty protest slogans, hire high-flying lawyers, get smothered by media attention and appear on talk shows to make their case to the public.

But don't despair. India had its own whiff of excitement the other day with another kind of fatty argument. The argument over 'total fatty matter' (TFM) in bathing soap. Marketers, allege the aggrieved, are cheating them on TFM - there just isn't enough in the soaps they sell, especially in the high-fat premium segment.

But first things first. What is TFM? Well, it takes the form of vegetable oil or milk cream, and acts like a base in the process of 'saponification' (or making soap). In general, the higher the TFM content, the more smooth the soap feels on the skin.

And what's the fight? A recent study conducted by VOICE, an NGO that promotes consumer awareness, reports that most soap brands available in India are either underweight or under-fat (the TFM content is lower than what is stated).

A big finger is being pointed at Hindustan Lever Ltd (HLL), the market leader. Its premium beauty radiance soap, Lux, complains VOICE, does not even bother to disclose its TFM content on the packaging. The VOICE report pulls up several other big brands as well: among them, HLL's Hamam, Pears, Lifebuoy Gold and Rexona. Of the 12 brands surveyed in the 75 gm, 100 gm and 150 gm categories, all are reported to be underweight. The alleged culprits here included HLL's premium soap, Liril.

So, does HLL have anything to say in its defence?

An HLL spokesperson contacted by BT Online refused to comment on the report, saying that the company is still studying the charges leveled against it. And that's it. The story would be over, and no one would hear of it again.

That's the funny part. Or the sad part, depending on your perspective. Here we have a grievance that some people feel strongly about (soap is an important part of life), and others dismiss as pure pfaff (after all, the bather has choice, and would switch to a higher value option if she felt so devastated by the imprecise specifications of her soap).

Yet, we don't have any of the fun that the Americans are having. Public interest is negligible. Why? Because the protestors haven't learnt the value of wise-guy sloganeering, banner-waving and hoarding tactics. And marketers haven't developed the sense of humour needed to turn the 'adverse publicity' about how-much-fat-is-good to their brands' advantage. Imagine the equivalent of a 'No Bullshit' movement initiated by VOICE. Also imagine Lux's lustrous-eyed beauties and Liril's hyperactive nymphs being forced to respond - with tongue-in-cheek cola wit.

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