Santoor, a sandalwood and turmeric soap by Wipro Consumer Care & Lighting, claims to address the universal need for eternal youth. For years, Haldi aur Chandan ke gun samaya santoor has been heard, and the consumers always appear to fall for it. This assertion was supported by CEO Vineet Agrawal’s recent statement that the brand has grown to be worth more than Rs. 2300 crore in FY22. It had reached a revenue milestone of Rs. 1000 crore in 2011-12. In an article featured in a leading business daily, Vineet said that Santoor continues to do well in the country. It has consistently been the second-best selling soap brand and is expanding the way it should be.
According to him, the first quarter is expected to see gains of at least 16%. The company says that the soap brand is currently leading in the states of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Karnataka. As per the annual report furnished by WCCL, Santoor’s growth happened to be 14.8% and it is listed as one of the key contributors to the group’s India domestic business growing by 17.3%.
In the Indian soap industry, Santoor competes against brands such as Dove, Lux, Liril, Pears, and Rexona, all from HUL. Reckitt’s Dettol as well as Godrej’s Cinthol also give it a tough fight. It is well to be noted that Santoor does not advertise itself as a pure sandalwood and turmeric soap. It is marketed as a body wash, deodorant, hand wash, body lotion, and baby care soap. The signature soap from the company is available in a range of fragrances such as almond, lime, aloe vera, rose water and honey, sakura extracts from Kashmir, almond oil, honey and glycerine.
The brand’s initial advertising, which ran in 1985, emphasised its elements as a selling point. The words Santoor and Tur are derived from sandalwood and turmeric, a tactic that received a pretty lacklustre response. In 1989, FCB Ulka took over control of Santoor brand building, and that’s when the emphasis shifted to smooth skin.
Notably, Santoor soap advertisements have been conventional for the longest time, almost two decades, with a radiant young woman with her skin showing her age. Ambi MG Padmanabhan, a brand consultant who served at FCB Ulka between 1994 and 2016 and also worked on the Santoor soap ad, says that it may not be appropriate to just credit Saif Ali Khan’s mummy ad campaign for the brands’ success. As per him, the brand is successful today because it capitalised on a customer insight according to which every woman enjoys looking youthful and delights in being mistaken for someone younger, like in the Saif Ali Khan advert where he is zapped after hearing someone looking so young being called Mummy.
The fact is that the creative idea of a mother being mistaken for someone younger has resonated well across three decades, with just the creative execution changing with time. In 2019, however, Santoor took a different path in how the soap can help protect a woman’s skin against pollution.
According to Brand Consultant, Abhimanyu Mishra from Brandfizz, cultivating a brand’s messaging and imaging happens to be a continuous process, and to preserve the audience receptivity to the communication and also retain consistency, any adjustments made in the advertisement must mirror the established narrative.
