MUMBAI: One of the leading oral-care product manufacturers and exporters, JHS Svendgaard Laboratories Ltd, had an exciting 2018 with the company clocking in revenue of Rs 143 crore, besides adding some impressive clients towards its core contract manufacturing business of toothpaste, toothbrushes and mouthwash.
Last month, the company even announced the expansion of its production capacity in South India to go beyond its current portfolio into other beauty items like creams, hair oils and shampoos. This will ease the company’s dependency on just the two northern plants.
MD Nikhil Nanda, in an exclusive conversation with Indiantelevision.com, shared some insights into the marketing strategies of the company for the year that went by and what he is looking forward to in 2019. He also spoke on the evolving marketing scenario and how various brands are adapting to it.
Edited excerpts:
What was the year 2018 like for JHS Svendgaard and what are your plans for the coming year?
We had a very exciting 2018 as we clocked in some good revenues and added new clients to our manufacturing business. Also, we saw our proprietary brand Aquawhite steadily gaining its market share in the category. Apart from that, we invested heavily in the kid’s range of Aquawhite™, which we are planning to launch in phases. The initial thrust is on Delhi/NCR market. The range has already been very well accepted at e-commerce platforms along with Big Bazaar, In&Out and leading outlets in Delhi.
For the coming year, we have planned to invest in our newly launched character driven innovative and concept based kids range. We would like to create distribution benchmarks through the modern trade channel, e-commerce platforms and build our success through class A outlets in top cities around the country.
What are the key marketing strategies that you are banking upon in 2019?
As a company, we are driven by innovation and a consumer-centric approach. We want to consistently stay true to that and we believe that will be a strong reason for the consumers to accept us.
Apart from the regular media and PR activities, we have recently signed Tiger Shroff as the brand ambassador for Aquawhite. He has a strong connection with the kids and we are sure the brand will thus be accepted by the audience at large. We are also looking at doing geography-targeted marketing through radio promotions in our key markets in order to engage our audience alike.
According to you, how are the advertising and marketing trends evolving these days?
Good content is ruling the market these days. Online video and paid search are driving the growth in global ad-spend, as advertisers focus on personalised and targeted communications. With advertisers now being able to use these channels to target with pinpoint accuracy and serve personalised messages, they are increasing both the efficiency and effectiveness of campaigns. Between 2018 and 2021, online video advertising will grow at an average of 18 per cent a year, twice as fast as other forms of internet display advertising and well ahead of any other channel. As per the recently launched Zenith’s Advertising Expenditure Forecasts, advertisers are now able to use personalised communication channels to serve targeted messages increasing the efficiency of campaigns.
Can you present a brief on how ad-spends being made and managed between various media by the brands across categories in India?
Currently, the ad-spends share stands at 45 per cent on television, 40 per cent on print, 10 per cent on digital and OTT, radio, OOH share the remaining 10 per cent. Growing allocation towards digital, radio, and OTT is being witnessed, but all this is still at an experimental stage. Having said that, I believe that, the CMOs have built considerable confidence in these new and emerging channels and thus they are increasing allocations. These segments are growing at much faster than traditional channels like television and print. OOH has literally lost its sheen and very large brands are able to afford and using as reminder media.
