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Liril Orange Splash? The latest variant from soap brand Liril. Is it indicative of a major makeover? By Aresh Shirali
Liril, Hindustan Lever's freedom soap from the mid-1970s, has been a subject of intense late-into-the-night debates among brand junkies in India. On one view, it is an indigenous asset that the Anglo-Dutch marketer Unilever could use globally. On another, it is a brand in need of a desperate rescue operation even within its market of origin---India. Now Hindustan Lever has finally done something 'splashy'. And it isn't exactly what the loyalist of the brand's classic lime-green variant might expect. The company has launched Liril Orange Splash, an orange bar with orange-slice rather than lime packaging. The variant strategy isn't new. In 2002, Lever had launched Liril Icy Mint, a blue bar with a mint-cool effect on the skin---an interesting idea, for sure, though with a decidedly male edge to its utility appeal. The TV advertising took the brand to an arctic setting, with a spine-shivering version of the classic sound mnemonic for added effect. The 'ice try karoge?' ('wanna try ice?') intangible proposition had some bite, but not enough to shake up the market. That variant's launch came after an attempt to revive the classic lime-green bar through a desert advertising campaign---with a soundtrack that was rumoured to have used a Japanese lyricist with a Rajasthani accent. The idea behind Liril Orange Splash, according to R. Balakrishnan of Lowe, the ad agency working on the brand's advertising account, is to splash into India's premium soap market with a dramatic new interpretation of 'freshness'---the brand's intangible proposition. To give the brand a "modern and contemporary" appeal, in Balakrishnan's description. That, as Lowe is keen to emphasize, is what the variant's ad campaign is trying to do as well. The TV spot features Deepika Padukone, the 'new Liril girl', and has her dancing in joyous orange-clad abandon in a splash of rain in the midst of some baked-mud village. The most striking part, at least to brand junkies, is the soundtrack. Inspired as it is by the Illyaraja style of South Indian beats and rhythm, it supplants the classic jingle (of which the ad features only a faint opening hint) with a rather less lyrical though more exclamatory sound: 'uff-umma'. Uff-umma? Uff-umma. Watch the ad for yourself. It's open to interpretation, as all art is. 'Oh!', 'Enough!', 'Too much!' 'Alright!': this is just a small sample of what ad-watchers have made of it. Exasperation---or arousal? Take your pick. From a strategic perspective, the brand optimists among the brand junkies mentioned in this report's second paragraph (the ones who see global opportunity) may reject the notion of an orange variant reviving Liril's fortunes. This, after all, is a classic brand with a well-conveyed set of values. Coca-Cola goes cherry, goes vanilla, goes one-cal... it doesn't go Pepsi blue. So wouldn't it be better to go for a re-imagined campaign for the original lime soap adapted to the current market context? The variant game suggests a failure of brand imagination---which could result in a dilution of Liril's appeal. The brand realists, as the variant-happy see themselves, would perhaps want to congratulate Lever and Lowe for making a big bold move, even if it doesn't signify the start of a major brand transformation. Freshness means freshness, they would say, and that means springing surprises on the target audience. So long as Liril is playing by the rules of its brand promise, its 'soul', everything else is changeable, especially the garb and other trappings. Yet, it's not easy to make a call on whether Lever has made a smart or disastrous move. Surprises are surprises, and that's good. But they are not to be sprung at the cost of brand integrity. A brand, eventually, must offer the consumer a consistent set of values---in all its forms. Hence the question: is the synergy between all the brand's variants good? That's not easy to answer. Liril has always stood for freshness and freedom from inhibitions, and it could be argued that the new Splash girl displays the desired verve in the TV commercial. The visual aspect conveys a sense---a different sense, but still a sense---of Lirilhood, it must be said. What about the soundtrack? Ah, now this is an imponderable. It calls for what Sergio Zyman called 'yoga for the mind'. Assume that Orange Splash is indeed intended as a variant of Liril, not a launch to subsume its parent (as Lowe sometimes seems to suggest by questioning classic Liril's freshness attribute). Here's a crazy thought: perhaps a more innovative approach for the Orange Splash variant may have been to co-opt, recast and Lirilize a yogic water-based cleansing technique called 'neti'. It could be turned funky. For the soundtrack too.
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When
does a brand need drastic dramatic differentiation? All the time, some
marketing radicals may say. Certainly when a brand is in trouble, others
may concede.