N. Shatrujeet
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Godrej appoints Contract for Snuggy's creative duties

Godrej Consumer Products (GCPL) has awarded Contract Advertising with the advertising account of recently acquired disposable baby diaper brand Snuggy

FMCG giant Godrej Consumer Products (GCPL) has awarded Contract Advertising with the advertising account of disposable baby diaper brand Snuggy, which it recently acquired from Shogun Diapers. Contract will be handling the creative duties for the 16-year-old brand, while the media duties will be with Madison Media, which is the AOR at GCPL.

Rajiv Sabnis, senior vice-president, Contract Advertising, confirmed the news to agencyfaqs!, saying, "The account was awarded to us recently. We were awaiting the formal announcement of the (brand's) acquisition (by GCPL) to begin work in full earnest." With the Snuggy account under its belt, Contract now handles three GCPL brands - the other two being Godrej Shaving Cream and Godrej Shaving Gel, both of which it won a little over a month ago.

Interestingly, there was no pitch that preceded Snuggy's move to Contract, Sabnis informs. "The brand was awarded to us on the basis of our recent work on Godrej Shaving Cream and Gel," he says. "The level of our thinking, the involvement and the contribution that our Godrej team is displaying… all of it made the client's decision that much easier." For the record, the Snuggy account was previously with Creative Unit, which had been handling all brand advertising ever since the brand was first launched in India, back in 1987.

GCPL's acquisition of the Rs 5-crore brand marks the company's entry into the rapidly growing baby care category in India. And although the disposable baby diaper market is currently small in India (the market is pegged at Rs 60 crore), GCPL is clearly betting on an upswing. "With rising disposable incomes, and increasing pressure on a mother's time, the diaper market will evolve fairly rapidly," observes Sabnis. He does, however, concede that homemade, reusable ‘cloth nappies' are still the most commonly used diapers in India, "as the value-for-money equation makes sense to a lot of mothers, even though, hygienically, it is not the best option for a baby".

Which is why Sabnis believes that the biggest challenge for Contract and Godrej will be "to change behaviour towards infant care and hygiene. The convenience that disposable diapers offer, along with the enhanced hygiene due to non-reusability, will have to drive this behavioural change. Our competition will be homemade diapers, rather than other branded diapers. We will need to expand the category." Incidentally, Snuggy - which was the first disposable baby diaper brand to be launched in the country - is India's third-largest baby diaper brand after Huggies (from Kimberly-Clark) and Pampers (Procter & Gamble).

With the communication task cut out, Sabnis informs that work on the account "has just started" and the communication strategy "is being worked out". He does not, however, comment on the size of the business. "That's a difficult question to answer since the brand is currently small," he says. "It depends entirely on what volume- and value-ambitions Godrej will have on the brand." © 2003 agencyfaqs!

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