It was 2006 when Nivea, born in 1911, set up shop in India. Since then, the brand has grown from strength to strength. As of October 2023, Nivea had 32 percent market share in the cold cream category.
Nivea launched a new campaign starring actress Madhuri Dixit, tennis star Sania Mirza, and singer Shreya Ghoshal.
Storyboard18 caught up with Sunil Gadgil, marketing director, Nivea India, who touched upon their iconic brand Nivea Creme, the evolution of their target audience, the recently launched campaign, and a lot more.
Edited excerpts.
Nivea’s India operations were launched in 2006. What market challenges did the brand face?
Nivea was a late entrant, considering our global competitors. Which meant that we had a lot of catching up to do in terms of brand, distribution, and supply chain.
How has Nivea’s target audience evolved since 2006?
The target audience has always been consistent, and the evolution of the Nivea consumer is in line with what we see in the market. It’s gone from mass market to omni-channel. This is not just in terms of just purchase behaviour, but also media consumption.
How competitive is the Indian skincare market and who are your strong competitors?
Skincare is a very big market, and has a lot of potential to grow in terms of penetration as well as consumption per head, compared to other markets. In the last few years, the Indian market has been very competitive. We’re seeing a lot of growth across the world, and we have the who’s who playing here.
We have big international companies which have been in India for long, and who we compete with across the world. Then we have very strong local players. We also have aggressive, new-age D2C brands. So, we have a full assortment of competition in India.
Could you touch upon brand Nivea and share if there will be any additions to the portfolio?
Nivea creme is an iconic brand, and it has stayed almost unchanged in terms of formulation for over a century now.
Hence, no additions or subtractions to the brand portfolio are in the works at this point of time in India. The idea is to keep it relevant to today’s consumer.
About the campaign, one of the challenges Nivea faces is that it’s a water-in-oil formula, an iconic formula. The base is oil, and there’s some water on top of it. It really makes this cream very nourishing.
Because it’s so rich and nourishing (for the skin), it is seen as winter care. But it has multiple applications. This is what we want to unpack so that consumers start thinking about Nivea as a crème for all seasons, and not just for winter.
You can use this if you have a skin irritation, or for minor burns. Its also used by a lot of consumers as a foundation for make-up. We have also seen that consumers are now really experimenting with body fragrances. But since they are afraid of putting the fragrance directly on the skin, they use Nivea as a base and mix the fragrance on top of it. So it becomes more like a medium to kind of keep the skin safe, while adding something on top of it.
These are all the possibilities, and we want to tell our consumers that the product can do so much more. This is what’s being done across the world. We’re starting with this campaign on Nivea crème, but doing more with it. We see good potential for short- and medium-term growth in India.
Could you speak about the recently launched campaign?
We are going to take celebrities, but use them more as online influencers. We are calling this the OG cream. #OG is a trend today in India and across many other markets. Nivea has been the OG crème because we are more than 100 years old.
How crucial has influencer marketing been for Nivea?
Influencer marketing is super critical for Nivea, like for any other skincare brand. We have given it the pedestal that is needed to acknowledge its importance in our marketing mix.
We have a property called Nivea Soft Fresh Batch, which we run every year. In its third edition, we reached out to around 400 campuses and tapped upcoming or wannabe influencers.
We screen-tested and selected 60 of them, and trained them, connected them with experts in the field, and they became influencers in their own right. And because of their association with Nivea, the brand also grew as they did. We will continue with this in future as well.
What are your consumer insights for 2023, and predictions for 2024?
Skincare is a high involvement category. Consumers do not just jump from one brand to another. They have a basket of brands which are acceptable to them, and they’re very careful about adding any brand to that basket.
Every brand has to make a lot of effort to ensure that they are being considered by the consumer, and that’s where influencers come in. They would be relevant for this category going ahead as well.
What’s your take on celebrity endorsements and what role have they played in enhancing Nivea’s brand image?
Historically, FMCG has always leveraged celebrities, and so has Nivea. But, there’s one key difference. Our associations are very fundamental.
We have had fewer, but longer, associations, and also our choice of celebrity reflects our brand values. We want the celebrity to embody what our consumers aspire to be.
How have the advertising and marketing strategies of Nivea evolved?
Nivea has always been a challenger brand in India. We only entered the country formally in 2006, and the market already had a lot of established multinational companies.
So Nivea has to come up with a very good reason as to why the consumer should start considering it.
We’ve always entered a market with a clearly defined consumer segment in mind. We talk to the market where we are the best fit, and show what value we can add.