Sunsilk Strategy in the US Market

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Introduction of Sunsilk Brand in the US

Sunsilk started its journey in the USA market in the second quarter of 2006 with eight segmented products to boost the market share of Unilever in this region. According to the ICMR report, the main purpose of Unilever to launch this brand in the US was to offer shampoo, creams, and other related products to minimize simple hair problems, for instance, it offered 24/7 cream to get more controllable hair. ICMR (2010, p.8) further added that the female customers of the US market are not brand loyal toward hair solutions, and most of the time they purchase such beauty products considering the free offers or other attractive packages.

Unilever plans to position

However, Unilever concentrated more on the research project to find out appropriate hair solutions for women as the ultimate aim of this company was to position this brand in the US market by offering complete hair solutions. The vice president of this zone stated that they have contracted with more than ten thousand women to gather knowledge about their hair problems and their expectation of the shampoo manufacturers. The significant outcome of their research project was that the customers of these products were not expected too much from the companies; therefore, female customers only want to know exact information about products.

Since Unilever aimed to position this brand as a market leader, it had a huge investment plan to promote the product to increase sales in the US market. Initially, the shampoo market was extremely competitive in this region due to a lack of loyal customers, frequent change of customer mind, low switching off costs, and so on. As a result, it was difficult for Unilever to establish Sunsilk brand as a market leader in the US though this brand has reputation for operating in eighty countries with huge success. However, the company had changed many strategies and started customizing its related product line to becoming a competitive brand and to fulfilling the demand of its target female customers. As different women faced different hair problems, this company offered shampoo for segmented customers, for instance, ethnic-specific hair and other related beauty products considering customers’ needs, which allowed the customer to choose the right solution for them. Also, the pricing strategy was lucrative to the customers as it fixed retail price only $3.590 per unit which was lower than others branded shampoo’s price.

Outcomes of the US market entry

ICMR reported that the introduction of this brand in the United States was a great initiative of the parent company as it experienced huge success at the initial stage and is listed in the top ten brands within six months of its launch (Mcclellan, 2006). Also, the total market share of the parent company in this zone increased more than 2.0% while the previous year this figure reduced by 0.6% in the hair products segment. The marketers estimated that the sales revenue of the conditioner segment would enlarge by 14% by 2010 in this market. It is significant to note that Unilever positioned this brand as a leading brand within one year, for instance, this company held the second position in 2007. on the other hand, the launch of this brand in the US market not only boost the company’s share but also enlarged the entire industry of this market, for example, the total market value in the hair products segment was $9.90 billion in 2006, which was $7.5 billion in the previous year. The above discussion demonstrates that the introduction of Sunsilk in the United States market was successful at the initial stage and this achievement has continued for a long time due to the implementation of promotional strategy and market research projects.

The promotional campaign

The company has taken several measures to promote the Sunsilk brand in the USA market such as the company implemented innovative strategies, advanced technological support, and introduced a marketing campaign to attract female customers and increase sales along with a market share of this market. The promotional campaign has been designed to build up the confidence of the young generation particularly female customers towards the Sunsilk brand as this target group always anxious about their hair problems. However, the marketers of Unilever produced a series of short films named “Sunsilk presents Max & Katie” as a part of their promotional campaign to increase the popularity of the brand and the duration of this film was only two minutes. This company has spent more than $10.0 million to produce 85 episodes to promote the brand and among these series of films, sixty-five episodes were advertised on TV channels and twenty episodes were accessible on the internet, mobile, electronic mail, and so on.

However, Unilever mainly launched two promotional campaigns to develop a brand image and attract US customers and these were known as “the Hairapy Campaign” exclusively to cover the US market and the “Life Can’t wait” Campaign for the US as well as global market.

The Hairapy Campaign: this was one of the most effective campaigns Unilever, which utilizes the advantages of social networking sites to change customer behavior, as these sites are popular to the target audience particularly to the single, stylist women around 25 years old like these sites. Also, the company recruited numerous harpists to suggest female customers as a part of this campaign program;
The “Life Can’t wait” Campaign: The motto of this program is to endorse celebrities to share their view and personal information regarding their life as well as their hair solution. However, the customers have an attraction to the celebrity, as they influenced by their personal opinion;
Other Campaigns: According to the report of ICMR (2010), this company arranged other promotional activities to attract more customers; such as 3-D displays had placed in more than nine hundred bars and in 2007, the company had used new technology to advertise in the shopping mall and it used this technology to transmit voiceovers.

The outcomes of the campaign and Reason for its success

I think the company was more concentrated on the promotional campaigns and spend a lot of money for this purpose, which increased cost but failed to create a positive view, as there were some controversial issues. However, the impact of the campaign was difficult to measure and the different campaign has different observation, such as the Hairapy Campaign was successful when the company considered the economic factors as it contributed to increasing sales revenues and customer base. This campaign also developed the relationship with the US female customers by regular communication regarding their hair solutions. At the same time, this campaign was popular with the busy women who have not enough time to spend on hair care and they asked to get easy solutions and advice to recover their hair by the short process. The company reported that they successfully addressed this issue in their business campaign; as a result, they received more than two hundred and forty million positive feedbacks from the target customers.

On the other hand, this marketing campaign was not effective to create value as the company was criticized for the incorporation of gays in their campaign and critics pointed out that Unilever should have a corporate social responsibility as a multinational company and it should not take such initiatives those can destroy or adversely affect on the public morals. However, the other campaign including the celebrity endorsement program has limited impact on the sales volume of this brand in the US market.

Significance of Using Online Communities for Brand Building and Market Development

Globalization and associated modern technologies have left online tools like online communities as significant business building blocks to develop target markets and brand status of a newly launched product or service. Conversely, beauty products are highly demanded long experience to get better quality, and thus it has attributed through rather diverse qualities than typical service or products. Moreover, the band is an indispensable organ of a Company that evolved more efficiently to conduct greater competitive advantages through long lasting dazzling impression. Hence, in short, the brand name has frequently been treated as a synonym of any product. Considering this hypothetical view, to promote the Sunsilk brand, Unilever US has always focused on women and teenagers since greater attachment with online and social networking. With pioneering marketing strategies along with attractive marketing campaign of Sunsilk brand for instance, in 2006, spent almost USD 200 million in promotional operations and additionally, the market building technique arranged two minutes short film featuring 85 mini-episodes as well as 65 episodes via latest electronic media like cable network, cell phone operators, online, Email and in stores display. In conducting these promotional modes, the Sunsilk brand has additionally spent USD 10 million.

“Hairapy” Concept to Promote the Sunsilk Brand

The “Hairapy” concept to demonstrate brand promotion of Sunsilk has been conceived through modern consumer behavior approach social networking. Moreover, the strategy of Unilever has assisted them to assess the rapid change of consumers’ tewas radically resolvedersely, the key objective of launching Hairapy was radically resolve women hair and scalp problems, as well as their social crisis s through demonsofferedhine of beautiful haharpistser feature of Hairapy website, offered three consultants (hairipsts) to counsel on women hair problem as well as social crisis and additionally, snazzy fashion concept of teen girls.

Hairapy promotion has also introduced several cultural events like gay quiz contest, pop concert and rawerefashion show, live program on FM Radio station where celebrities was host to answer listeners’ question. However, Unilever criticized a lot for using gay to launch such a high profile product. Meanwhile, the webpage of Hairapy other than hair care dilemmas, dating as well as women issues on both personal and social revealed. With the commence of the webpage, 4000 visitors join here for direct connectivity to fulfill test and demand. Despite the gay contest, the online promoting tools of Sunsilk brand was able to rank among the top ten US beauty care product list for the first six months of promotion. In the case of sales volume, it accomplished dramatic success for the first few months of launch but after several periods, there was a drastic fall of sales and the campaign failed to survive as the company discontinued its service from this market, so it can conclude that this campaign was not successful.

Reasons in Opposite of the “Hairapy” Approach

Considering the momentary life cycle of the Hairapy campaign as well as low sales return, it has recommended that the promotional tool is enough modern but fails to convey a significant impact on Unilever’s aggregate success. In opposition to the strategy firstly, it has notified that in promoting women’s beauty products use of gay men was quite absurd. Secondly, other than beauty treatment there have lots of social crises to talk about in live programs hosted by celebrities during promoting Sunsilk. For instance, drug addiction, obsession, HIV/AIDS, broken family, poverty problem, virgin mother, cervical cancer, and many more through which Hairapy would articulate for social responsibilities but they were only focused on expensive cultural events and glamour world. Third, the promotion of beauty products and care should focus on nutrition and food values those earnestly help to recover scalp and hair problem rather than chemical. Following three issues, Unilever is in an emergency to redesign their promotional strategies as soon as possible.

Suggested Strategy for Sunsilk to Sustain in the US Market

From the given case it has been urged by the analysts pointed out at one success of the campaign but suspicious for the long-term outcomes in the US market. The evaluation of the conducted campaign identified that it has gathered millions of new users for Sunsilk, which positively enhanced revenue generation. Thus, there is no way to undermine the outcome of the campaign in long run. The campaign has been conducting from 2007 to 2008, the year when the US economy was shocked by the global financial crisis and its recessionary impacts, people were disturbed with a high job cut-rate, and to sustain their lifestyle. Thus, it is quite natural that Unilever’s strategy for the US market for Sunsilk may be hampered for only the weakness of strategy but also external impacts. This researcher thinks there is no reason for Unilever to change its strategy in the US market but necessary to modify them cost-effectively and the suggestive modified strategies by the case are-

Enhanced Marketing Communications through Social Networking Sites

In the case, it has mentioned that the conducted campaign in 2007 and 2008 was concerned with AOL, TMZ, and MySpace, at this stage, Unilever’s Sunsilk must integrate with a large scale of social networking sites like Facebook, Bebo, YourTube, Friendster and so on to get an elevated respond from the target customers. Such integration would provide Sunsilk accelerated opportunities to pick up customer understanding, by promoting social and personal life concerns sharing, encouraging customers about the hair problem-solving attributes of Sunsilk, developing hair care awareness, and exchanging viewpoints of the users that may result in increased knowledge sharing on Sunsilk brand awareness;

Cost-Effective Celebrities Engagement

The given case demonstrated that the campaign was launched with famous icons like Madonna, Shakira, and Marilyn Monroe has gathered at a single drive under one campaign, due to cost-effective engagement of celebrities, here Sunsilk needed to maintain postponement strategy and involve the top icons one by one giving interval among each other. Moreover, Unilever needed to engage rising celebrities top icons or go for talent search rather than highly expensive top Celebrities. the accomplishments of newly raising celebrities may not have a global presence but Sunsilk needs to gaining a competitive advantage in the context of US competitors and going with passion and urgency to belong the market share Unilever needs to having confidence and faith of its customers where the newly raising celebrities would inspire the new generation women;

Cost Cutting Edges of Advertising

During the previous campaign, Unilever spend US$ 2.70 million every 30 seconds with Fox TV during the national football league, billboards, 900 display boards with audio- visual innovative technology to attract the customer’s attention that involved a huge advertising budget. Unilever needed to create a time gap for high budget involved adverting but emphasized low-cost innovative e-marketing that would generate a strong customer base online;

Another Promotional strategy

From the case, it has demonstrated that Unilever spends a huge budget to turn Sunsilk into a matter of gossip of celebrities, but under the present situation, Unilever needed to consider the return on investment before involving huge budget adverting. The suggestive cost-cutting strategy would argue for an enhanced web based promotional strategy that would ultimately generate sales and create an elevated customer base. Also, this suggestive strategy for Sunsilk to sustain in the US market would argue to outsourcing different promotional services including IT-enabled services from Asian emerging markets like China India, and Bangladesh, and it would be a cost effective measure for Unilever.

Reference List

ICMR (2010) Marketing Sunsilk: How Unilever Launched its Global Hair Care Brand in the US. Web.

Mcclellan, S. (2006) Unilever’s Sunsilk Launch Goes Far Beyond the Box. Web.

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