Making sense of Emami’s ‘smart’ Fair and Handsome rebranding

In 2020, HUL turned a page on its popular skincare brand Fair and Lovely, rebranding it to Glow and Lovely. The new identity was birthed in response to criticism that the brand name was looking down upon darker skin tones, and promoted discriminative beauty standards. 

Five years later, Emami has rebranded its flagship men’s skincare brand, Fair and Handsome, to Smart and Handsome. To amplify the new identity, the personal care conglomerate, which has a history of A-list celebrity ambassadors such as Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan, has onboarded Karthik Aaryan as the brand’s new face.

This is part of a larger trend within the cosmetics industry, where many other brands have taken similar steps to rid the industry of its absurd nomenclature. 

These include L'Oréal, which committed to removing similar usage of words from its skincare range globally in 2020, and Johnson & Johnson (J&J), another major conglomerate that ceased sales of skin-whitening products under its Clean & Clear and Neutrogena brands in Asia and the Middle East.

But, why has Emami decided to rename its products now? Ashwini Deshpande, the co-founder of Elephant, an independent integrated design consultancy behind the new rebranding, says that the brand has been mulling over some new product launches, and the new name fits the bill. 

 “Men's grooming category has had a phenomenal evolution in the past few years with increased awareness about problems and possibilities to solve them. It seemed like the right time to do this rebranding as Emami is venturing into several grooming products with an array of benefits and solutions, well beyond fairness,” she says.

Let’s talk design

The new identity of the brand retains most design elements of its previous rendition, such as the colour palette, font style, and overall aesthetic. The clear focus appears to be on the word ‘Fair’, and fairly so. 

Deshpande explains the rationale behind this: “For an immensely successful and loved brand, a rebrand doesn't require a complete turnaround. The name was already representative of the promise of things to come, with the extended grooming portfolio. There was no need to take away the familiarity of the logo.”

Replacing ‘Fair’ with ‘Smart’ in the product name also seems particularly interesting. We know the word smart is colloquially used in India to define ‘attractive’ men. But is that true for the rebranding as well? 

Deshpande explains, “Smart is what smart does. It is a simple word, conveys the positive state and cuts across every section of the audience.”

By the way, the first ad from the brand under its new identity takes Smart as an abbreviation of Sexy, Manly, Attractive, Romantic, Tough.

Shekhar Badve, who is the founder and director at Lokus Design, a strategic design consulting company, has his own take on the new design of the brand and the strategy behind it. 

 “The brand has very cleverly used graphic elements such as the lines, the V-cut, and very sharp profiles of the model, essentially to cue masculinity into the product. All the men’s grooming products have these definitive strong lines forming shapes like a V or trapezoidal forms, which cue performance.” 

“Colours”, he says, “are pretty masculine as well, with strong oranges, greens, and blues, along with blacks, which are very typical of masculine products”.

Badve also suggests that retaining much of the brand’s previous identity is smart as the consumers are more likely to pick the product off the shelf if it reads Emami and carries the same imagery. 

“The proposition delivery through the packaging is happening nonetheless. As long as the product looks like it is from Emami, and there is a glowing man on the pack, consumers don’t really bother. As a name, however, the word smart doesn’t add anything to the product,” he says.

Words have meaning

While Fair and Handsome treaded problematic waters with its colourism-tinged messaging, it at least delivered a clear, albeit controversial, promise - the tangible outcome of lighter skin. The pivot to Smart and Handsome feels like a semantic stumble into abstraction, unless the brand is able to sell this new intangible proposition. This comes with its own set of creative challenges. 

Viren Razdan, who is the managing director of Brandnomics, a strategy consulting company, says that the new identity might be hard to communicate, compared to ‘fairness’. 

He says, “The category has been deeply entrenched in this communication trope of fairer skin tones being superior. These products have conventionally been a hard sell, largely due to how the advertising in the space has enacted the impact of the cream on the skin. It’ll be interesting to see how Emami advertises the new identity.”

"In this new context, the previous product rationale will be subdued in some manner. And the new proposition might be metaphorically explained in some emotional manner." 

Viren Razdan, Brandnomics

Razdan opines that the communication strategy here has to be emotional, as opposed to the propositional nature of ‘Fair and Handsome’. “In this new context, the previous product rationale will be subdued in some manner. And the new proposition might be metaphorically explained in some emotional manner. This is really new territory for the brand Smart and Handsome, and it will carry a powerful weight of Emami’s legacy.”

Too late, or just in time?

"This move by Emami is fairly at the tail end of other changes that have already happened in the category. This is just a laggard deciding to give in.”

Manish Porwal, Alchemist

While Emami’s move is a step in the right direction for the brand and the category, the pertinent question is: Is the brand late to the party? Razdan says yes. “HULs of the world have already taken leadership in coming across as being conscious about the changing society, and therefore that gets reflected in their brands. Emami, however, has been a little late in some manner.”

Manish Porwal, who is the managing director of Alchemist Marketing Solutions, is also of the opinion that Emami could have done this rebranding quite some time ago. He says, “This move by Emami is fairly at the tail end of other changes that have already happened in the category. This is just a laggard deciding to give in.”

 While Porwal believes that the rebranding is not going to have an impact on the brand’s image and sales, he says that taking Karthik Aryan as the brand ambassador will help minimise the risk, if any. 

“They've got Karthik Aaryan to make sure that the impact of the change is the least possible, and so that they're able to get newer customers if required. In fact, I'm sure that their strategists are working on how any loss of low-order customers can be supplemented with higher-order customers. And getting Aaryan is one of the smarter moves to cushion that fall.”