Horlicks Case Study Bangladesh

CASE STUDY ON THE MARKETING MANAGEMENT PRACTICES OF

HORLICKS IN BANGLADESH

Prepared for:

Mr. Md. Iftekharul Amin

Course Instructor: M302 Marketing Management

Assistant Professor

Institute of Business Administration, University of Dhaka

Prepared by:

Group: IBA Coconut Corps

Afsara Zaheen Ahmed RH-24

Noushin Wadud Khan RH-58

Sajeed Alam ZR-60

Ahnaf Ahmed ZR-62

BBA Batch 20 Section A

Institute of Business Administration, University of Dhaka

Submitted on

May 20, 2014

CASE STUDY: Horlicks – A Brand Growing Beyond “Taller, Stronger & Sharper” 1

CASE STUDY: Horlicks – A Brand Growing Beyond “Taller, Stronger & Sharper”

Horlicks, the globally acclaimed malt-based drink has evolved into an integrated part of the average Bangladeshi household over the period of a few years. Initially distributed by Mutual Group Bangladesh (former distributors of Dano and Horlicks), the operations were eventually undertaken when original parent company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) ventured into the Bangladesh market in 2008. GSK Consumer

Healthcare, a subsidiary of GSK Bangladesh currently oversees the Horlicks brand. Globally, GSK operates the Horlicks brand in over 9 countries in 4 continents. Initially, consumers in Bangladesh perceived Horlicks from an entirely opposite approach. Almost all members, including the senior citizens of the family were consuming this malt and milk based drink and there was a growing culture to consume Horlicks as a remedy for illness or tiredness. Even students were drinking Horlicks right before exams due to a perception of increased concentration. Ironically, the brand’s primary target audience was in the segment of children aged 8 and above! The Horlicks brand was behaving entirely different from its DNA. The root cause for this dissonance was the unavailability of marketing management practices and the void created due to the lack of the presence of the brand as a whole. In order to fill this void created over time, when GSK took over operations, its primary objective was to educate the customers about the actual target consumer base and the actual benefits and science behind the consumption of Horlicks. This led to the “Taller, Stronger, Sharper” campaign. “Taller, Stronger, Sharper” – a new approach to rectify a prior misconception GSK decided on reinforcing the value proposition of Horlicks to ensure that it was reaching out to its actual target consumers, the children aged 8 and above, and most importantly, the buyers, their parents. In order to do so, GSK decided to shape the campaign around the science of consuming Horlicks. Thus emerged the “Taller, Stronger, Sharper” campaign. The campaign highlighted the three core competencies of Horlicks in terms of its nutritional value; that it made children aged 8 and above, taller, stronger and sharper. There was widespread use of ATL marketing efforts starting from print media circulation, points-of-sales arrangements, and television and radio commercials to communicate this claim. In a matter of months, the campaign was a phenomenal success. This can be attributed to the creative route taken by the brand management team to ensure that not only a value but also a holistic and fun experience was delivered. The campaign, like GSK Consumer Healthcare’s modus operandi for any marketing communication, was thus divided into two segments: communicating the science and communicating the emotion. Since consumers were so confused about the nutritional value of Horlicks, GSK believed that the brand required the assertion of the actual scientific claim. Globally, the Horlicks R&D team discovered evidence of Horlicks consumers growing taller, stronger and sharper over time compared to consumers of competing malt-based drinks. These results supplemented the product’s scientific claim.


In order to reinforce this and position Horlicks not as a medicine with scientific benefits but rather as a fun drink for children, the campaign introduced the “epang, opang, jhapang!” jingle. It communicated that nutrition was fun and that children enjoyed the Horlicks experience. To add to that, they also kept their mothers, the bhabis, happy and this emotional connection was a massive hit. Although this campaign had been previously conducted in India, the results proved similar here because of the massive socio-economic similarities. Now standing in 2011, GSK Consumer Healthcare realized that the Horlicks brand could be leveraged into newer heights. Generally, Horlicks is consumed with milk and milk goes to about 30 percent of the households in Bangladesh. However, only 1/10th of these households consume Horlicks. This presented a challenge for Horlicks to analyze the lack of penetration into the remaining households over time. After detailed consumer behavior analysis, the key barrier identified was that consumers perceived Horlicks as an “extra drink or meal” or an extra source of nutrition. So whenever a child required extra nutrition such as when he/she would fall sick or for extra performance such as for examinations, he/she would consume Horlicks. It was not perceived as part of the diet or as a necessity for nutrition development. That’s where the GSK team decided to build the brand’s relevance as a day-to-day part of a child’s nutrition. It wanted to reinforce that nutrition is not dynamic, but rather an integrated part of one’s lifestyle and Horlicks deserved a permanent position in that lifestyle. That led to the emergence of a new campaign, “Bere uthar dose, roj roj!” Reaching new heights – “Bere uthar dose, roj roj” The creative route for this campaign revolved around the concept of conscious mothers as the brand entity. Why mothers if the target consumers are children aged 8 and above? It is simply because the mothers are the purchasers and also act as the gatekeepers. What GSK tried to do was to capitalize on the behavioral patterns of these mothers and gather insight. At GSK Consumer Healthcare, the branding team formulates a very comprehensive creative strategy. The barrier is placed in the middle, and insights around the barrier are derived. From these insights, the creative route is formulated, and, based on the barrier, effectively communicated. In this case the insight gathered was that most of the mothers are predominantly housewives and there is a growing sense of competition among housewives in terms of who provides the best nutritional care for their children. These housewives have their own social circles, addressing each other as “bhabis” and these bhabis eventually became the core brand elements for Horlicks. So how does the competition effectively function? When bhabis observe that another bhabi is providing her child with better nutritional care, this spurs competition among the rest to become the best bhabi out there. This emotionally driven incentive comprised the part of the campaign, which communicated the emotion. This was further bolstered by communicating the science, i.e. justifying how better nutritional care could be provided by Horlicks. Even after careful inspection and monitoring, it is highly probable that a child does not receive the required nutritional value from his/her daily intake of food even after consuming a proper diet at proper times. The reasons include the lack of food security and food safety due to adulteration in any meal. This results in a nutritional gap for the child and the R&D team at Horlicks discovered that about 89 percent of micronutrient deficiencies occur due to this gap. That is where Horlicks stepped in. Its scientifically proven nutrients strived to minimize this nutritional gap and the science part of the campaign emphasized on that. Eventually, there were health-conscious, competitive bhabis striving to provide their children with the best nutritional care, which was


lacking in a regular meal. This generated a need to provide these children something healthy and integrate that into the regular diet to fill this gap. Essentially, Horlicks became more than a source of supplementary nutrition; it became the key to providing children a complete nutritional package, one that would be required daily. Hence the name, “bere uthar dose, roj roj!” And with this campaign, the Horlicks brand was re-launched in 2011, undergoing a massive revamp. An integrated marketing approach was taken to keep the billboards, TVCs and all promotional tools coherent with the value Horlicks was trying to deliver, to fill the nutritional

gap in children by feeding them Horlicks on a regular basis. One of the most significant changes brought upon was the change in packaging and product outlook. The glass jars were replaced with plastic jars and the entire visuals were changed to make Horlicks more consumer-friendly. This was in line with GSK’s core outlook on brand development. As Abeer Rajbeen, Brand Manager for Horlicks Bangladesh, put it, “A brand is a dynamic entity. It behaves like a human being and just the way, we as

humans change over time, a brand also requires certain changes.” Such was the rationale behind this revamp and the results were far beyond spectacular. Just like a product’s life cycle, even a campaign has a certain life cycle. In GSK’s belief, a campaign usually takes about 6 months to build up and generate hype. After some time it develops fatigue and then it becomes time to gradually shift towards delivering a different message on a different level to the consumers. Likewise, for the duration of the “Bere uthar dose, roj roj” campaign, which ended in May 2012, GSK had achieved its target of getting consumers to identify Horlicks as a day-to-day product. However, this led to a whole new dimension of challenges and it was time to shift towards delivering a new brand message. Mothers started comparing Horlicks with other daily food products and trying to determine which would be better. The original objective was to position Horlicks as part of the “regular food” and not a competitor for any meal but clearly there was a gap in the consumers’ minds in perceiving this. On the bright side, the idea of competitive mothers, i.e. bhabis, had been working well for the brand. Combining this new challenge of Horlicks comparison with the existing brand image portrayed by the competitive mothers, a new campaign, The Food Equivalence Campaign, was launched. “The Food Equivalence Campaign” – a fight for a place in the regular diet The objective of the food equivalence campaign was to show how nutrition dense Horlicks was compared to other daily food items such as eggs, milk and vegetables. For example, 1 jar of Horlicks had the vitamin C content of one lemon and enough vitamin D to be equivalent to 4 apples. This relevance required effective communication to the customers. Thus, a 360-degree marketing campaign called ambient marketing was launched by GSK, which strived to compare the nutritional value of Horlicks compared to daily food items. At grocery stores, visual cutouts were placed which would compare vegetable servings with Horlicks servings, such as the number of eggs, which had nutritional value equivalent of one jar of Horlicks.


This campaign generated a lot of buzz among the concerned mothers as they could visually see scientifically proven statistics of relevance of food and Horlicks. Although, this increased the reach of Horlicks massively, there was intense speculation and media coverage on the validity of the nutritional equivalence. Yet still, this equivalence campaign ranks as the most successful in terms of reach for Horlicks. Apart from comparing Horlicks with other food items, mothers were simultaneously comparing milk and Horlicks, in terms of which would secure a place as a regular food item in their children’s diet and whether Horlicks and milk would go together. GSK did not address this issue in the food equivalence campaign, as the equity of milk is so high that mixing both campaigns would not provide the leverage the brand was aiming for. This led to the creation of another simultaneous campaign, “Horlicks mishao, dudh er shokti barao.” “Horlicks mishao, dud her shokti barao” – reaffirming a place in the diet The idea was to convince mothers that Horlicks provided additional nutritional value when added to milk. Inevitably, milk is an essential part of a child’s regular meal and the campaign encouraged mothers to feed their children milk regularly. An added incentive it provided was the fact about the increase in nutritional value, which was part of communicating the science in this campaign. As for all the previous campaigns, bhabis proved to be effective in communicating the emotions in this campaign as well. As a result of this campaign, the packaging was modified once again to include the science aspect of the nutritional value of Horlicks. So far the motto for Horlicks had been to make children taller, stronger and sharper. What this scientific claim lacked was evidence. How could the mothers assess whether their children were growing taller, stronger and sharper? Hence, there was a need for a more effective scientific claim and thus emerged the revamp of the brand identity to incorporate the “5 Signs of Growth.” “5 Signs of Growth” – a new claim, a new science In order to consolidate the science behind Horlicks, the tagline had evolved into showcasing the 5 signs of growth. This included claims of how Horlicks helped children develop healthier

blood, healthy weight gain, better concentration, more muscles and more bone area. This new value proposition is being integrated into all of the current campaigns, product packaging and promotional tools of Horlicks as an

integrated marketing approach. In fact, competing health drinks are also adapting a similar approach of using scientific claims to strengthen their positioning. Competing mothers are still being used by Horlicks as the influencers and representatives of the brand.


As of now, this campaign is effectively serving the purpose of a desired brand positioning of Horlicks. Once fatigue creeps into this campaign, perhaps the creative hub at GSK Consumer Healthcare will look into a more robust, or completely diverse campaign. After all, Horlicks has gone a long way starting off as a malt drink for all ages to being an exclusive nutritional drink for children, which is heavily patronized by their mothers and almost all of this success is due to carefully coordinated marketing management practices of GSK Consumer Healthcare. In fact, the Horlicks brand is growing even further in Bangladesh by extending the brand and venturing into newer consumer markets (Horlicks Junior, Horlicks Lite, Women’s Horlicks). This not only brings a host of new marketing challenges but also adds to the Horlicks brand’s growing equity. Just like its former motto, the Horlicks brand itself is growing taller, stronger and sharper over time…

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Horlicks Case Study Bangladesh