‘Sensodyne’s success is truly straight out of a marketing book’

You are possibly unfamiliar with Haleon but, conversely, are well acquainted with several of its OTC (Over-the-Counter) brands. That’s because the company was carved out of GlaxoSmithKline’s consumer-facing healthcare division in only 2022. Haleon’s brands have been around for decades.

In one of the most detailed interviews ever about the OTC market, Anurita Chopra talks about what it takes to manage a diverse portfolio. For the complete interview, click here to visit YouTube.

Sreekant Khandekar: Companies are normally older than the brands they own. In Haleon’s case, the company is only three years old, but Centrum is more than 40 years old, Sensodyne is over 60 and Eno is 150+ years old. From a marketing standpoint, does it matter that consumers don’t know the company behind some famous brands?

Anurita Chopra: We are in the business of selling consumer brands that they trust. I don’t think consumers care who the parent company is. As long as the brands are trusted and solve a real consumer problem, they are fine with that. 

Sreekant Khandekar: Are you saying corporate credibility is not much of an issue? Companies do spend lots of money promoting their corporate brand. 

Anurita Chopra: Let me answer the question differently. The leadership team did give this issue great thought when Haleon was formed.

Doctors advocate the use of many of our brands, so they needed to know who was behind these products, these molecules. Our expert field force has spent a lot of time over the last three years with doctors telling them that nothing has changed except for the corporate name. 

Similarly, it is important for the company to be known in the interest of government relations and in industry bodies. Even employees feel good if their friends and families know what Haleon is.

Eno is available in 4.5 million grocery stores. Alongside modern retail channels, e-commerce—including quick commerce—is rapidly expanding its reach. Over a billion packs of the antacid are sold each year in India.

Sreekant Khandekar: You have a diverse portfolio of OTC products – in oral health, pain relief, digestive health, vitamins, minerals and supplements. What kind of synergies exist in marketing these? Is the consumer the same, or is it the distribution you can leverage, for example?

Anurita Chopra: We are in the business of offering everyday health solutions. It has to be an issue consumers can solve on their own.

The common piece from our point of view is the consumer who could equally suffer from acidity (Eno), tooth sensitivity (Sensodyne), nasal issues (Otrivine) or vitamin deficiency (Centrum).

Our job is to tell people that they don’t have to live with their problems.

As for synergy, it’s all about cohorting since in today’s world we don’t target a single consumer base. Some issues may increase as people get older, but, on the other hand, young people who travel a lot and eat out face acidity issues much earlier than they used to.

By the way, tea, coffee and juices – especially lime – are not great for tooth sensitivity.

So, it’s not about segmenting people only by age but also by the kind of life they are leading, their attitudes, their location and how important health is in their life.

There’s synergy in distribution because chemists play a role for our product range, but, equally, Eno is available at 4.5 million grocery stores. Modern trade has a role, and now e-commerce – including quick commerce – is getting a bigger play. We sell more than a billion packs of Eno every year.

You could say that we are channel agnostic. We are where the consumer is.

Sreekant Khandekar: You were talking of different cohorts. Could you share an unusual example of consumer behaviour?

Anurita Chopra: Sure. When we introduced Centrum, our hypothesis was that the woman would buy the vitamins for herself and for her family because, after all, she is the caregiver. When we launched our D2C site and sliced the data – and surprise, surprise! The woman is buying for herself; the man is buying for the rest of the family.

Sreekant Khandekar: That’s strange.

Anurita Chopra: The simple explanation is that the woman is treating this as a health and well-being product for herself, just like she buys a lot of personal care. She thinks she is doing it for herself so that she has more energy and immunity to look after herself and her family.

But the male, who can’t really cook or contribute much by way of household chores, feels like he is contributing for his wife and kids by buying Centrum. It makes him feel that he is doing something useful.

In the space of healthcare, you don’t need to pull a new rabbit out of your hat every other day – because health never goes out of fashion!

Sreekant Khandekar: Is the challenge in marketing OTC products significantly different from that of marketing the normal FMCG brands?

Anurita Chopra: We place the consumer at the centre, and at no point do we want to be in a position where we cannot stand behind our science. The second piece is the claims we make. For example, Eno has this awesome claim that it starts to act in 6 seconds. That line has been around for years, and it has stuck.  

That’s the other thread: in the space of healthcare, you don’t need to pull a new rabbit out of your hat every other day – because health never goes out of fashion! You just need to make sure that your science is getting better and your claims are laid out in a way the consumer can understand because she needs her problems solved quickly. And as long as she gets those benefits very clearly on your packaging and in your material, you're home.

Sreekant Khandekar: Cutting a sachet of Eno, pouring the powder into a glass and then adding water – it is an old ritual consumers are used to. Isn’t it difficult to sell them Eno in a chewable format (Eno Chewy Bites) as you are trying now?

Anurita Chopra: You are right, it doesn’t come easy, which is why I made the point earlier about the size and scale of the core business. However, the younger consumers are far more amenable to trying out different products and different formats. For them, it’s an easier migration. These are stretch opportunities when a brand is getting into new, adjacent spaces. But the brand must consistently invest behind this stretch.

Sreekant Khandekar: I have watched Sensodyne gain market share over the years. I thought it was a niche play, but clearly I was wrong. What is the Sensodyne story? Has it grown because Indians especially have a problem with tooth sensitivity?  What kind of market share does the brand have?

Anurita Chopra: Sensodyne’s success is global because one out of two people everywhere suffer from tooth sensitivity, and it gets worse with age. Its Indian success is a case study within Haleon because of the pace of growth and the size that we have achieved.

We are touching double-digit market share in a fairly huge category. And Sensodyne is growing much, much more rapidly than any other brand in the category.

In India, people didn’t know what tooth sensitivity was. We coined the word ‘jhanjhanahat’. We’ve spent the last dozen years educating Indians about this condition. The single biggest piece in our Sensodyne model is consistency.

We first used practising dentists in our communication, and now we have genuine consumers. The authenticity is evident in their expression when we shoot them. That feeling can’t be faked, and the authenticity resonates with consumers. We also go to more than 70,000 dentists and advocate the science behind Sensodyne.

Sensodyne’s success is truly straight out of a marketing book. It is what Philip Kotler and David Aaker taught us in business school: keep it sharp, keep it consistent and invest behind your brand.

Sreekant Khandekar: Indians, especially the older ones, can be quite stoic about discomfort. How do you get them to try Sensodyne, especially since consumers generally hate to switch their toothpaste brand?

Anurita Chopra: You're right, changing the toothpaste habit is the most difficult nut to crack because it's your first taste of the morning.

Our first task was to create awareness about her condition, about ‘jhanjhanahat’. We went all over India trying to understand what that tingling sensation was called in the local language. Our advertising then spoke to them in their language – we don’t dub.

After all, what is advertising beyond a point? It is all about psychology and knowing exactly what that trigger and that pulse are when you catch the consumer's attention and propel her to make a decision in your favour.

But what really worked was when we began saying, ‘Look, if you ignore it, the sensitivity will only get worse’. People used to wrongly think that if they ignored it, the feeling would go away. When they realised that it would get worse, they sat up and began to take notice of our message. 

Sreekant Khandekar: And now on to my last question: where is the bulk of your growth going to come from over the next three years? 

Anurita Chopra: We are going to play to our strengths. Sensodyne continues to be the jewel in our crown. It has created history for the brand’s global footprint. India is critical, and we have huge expectations and ambition for Sensodyne.

We know our strategy is panning out. So, if our growth trajectory continues in the same way, and the category keeps growing, we are going to be pretty much the biggest players in toothpaste. That’s a core priority for us.

Centrum is a huge opportunity because sadly, Indians, in spite of living in a hot, sunny country, are vitamin deficient. They are calcium deficient as well. 

Apart from Eno, which is in every Indian kitchen cabinet, we are doing a lot of work on Otrivine. If you use the nasal spray, it can give relief in a few seconds, and you can breathe easy. Why struggle with complicated solutions if you have a cold and flu?

As for Iodex, it has entered muscle care. So, if someone’s calves are hurting from standing too long, Iodex can now ease that. It has nothing to do with its traditional role as a cure for aches and pains. 

So, we are trying quite a few innovations which use our understanding of the new India and leveraging that to find new spaces where the equity of our brands can stretch. If we do that and use good, solid segmentation, business will surely come.