First brands simplify the product handling and tracing. Brands help to organize inventory and accounting records.

The brand name can be protected registered trademarks. The intellectual property rights ensure that the firm can safely invest in the brand and can reap the benefits over a long period of time. HLL has a large brand portfolio consisting of nearly 110 bands. In every product line, it has built a number of brands over a period of time. Quite a few brands have come to its fold from the parent company. It has also acquired several ongoing brands from the market. HLL also vigorously pursues brand extension strategy. And concurrently, HLL undertakes line pruning and brand restructuring and consolidation, based on marketing compulsions. So, HLL opted for the strategy of developing quite a few strong brands in this line, and among them they cover different market segments and price points. Dove, Lux, Liril, Rexona, Pears and Lifebuoy are the outcome of

such a well planned brand strategy implemented over time. Lifebuoy is 100 years old and Liril 15 years old. In fact, HLL has about 10 brands of toilet soaps each having good volume of sale to its credit. The point is that decisions on brand portfolio are a fundamental expression of the companys objectives and strategy governing a given business. Towards the close of the 1990s, HLL found that the germicide segment of the soap market was growing fast, with RCIs Dettol antiseptic soap leading it. HLL did not have suitable offer in its stable to capture a share of this segment. Lifebuoy was not strictly meeting the particular benefit. HLL knew that launching and developing a new brand would take a lot of time and resources, and the company would miss the market if it chose this route. HLL did not have the product formula either to enter this segment. It was in this background that HLL decided to hire the Savlon brand from J&J. Savlon was a successful antiseptic lotion, a competitor to Dettol lotion. Just as the Dettol soap owed its

origin to the success of the Dettol lotion, HLL assessed that a Savlon antiseptic soap could be successfully extended from the Savlon lotion. HUL's brands - like Lifebuoy, Lux, Surf Excel, Rin, Wheel, Fair & Lovely, Pond's, Sunsilk, Clinic, Pepsodent, Close-up, Lakme, Brooke Bond, Kissan, KnorrAnnapurna, Kwality Wall's are household names across the country and span many categories - soaps, detergents, personal products, tea, coffee, branded staples, ice cream and culinary products. They are manufactured over 40 factories across India. The operations involve over 2,000 suppliers and associates. Today brand extension strategies are widely employed because of beliefs that they build and communicate strong brand positioning, enhance awareness and increase profitability. Brands are often extended beyond their original categories to include new product categories. Research has proved that the success of brand extension depends on the transfer of parent brand awareness and associations to the extension. The transfer of these quality perceptions is the key in umbrella branding. An umbrella brand is a brand that covers diverse kinds of products which are more or less related. It applies also to any company that is identified only by its brand and history. It is contrasted with individual branding in which each product in a portfolio is given a unique identity and brand name. Hindustan Unilever Ltds (HUL) beverage brands have been amalgamated under two umbrella brands Brooke Bond and Lipton and in the fabric wash category, the company has retained only Rin, Surf and Wheel, HUL has withdrawn brands such as Sunlight, 501, Dalda and Nihar; it plans to

withdraw some more brands and group them under a few umbrella brands. HUL is currently focusing on 35 power brands.

From those use-for-special occasion days, Dove has come a long way. Last year, HUL executives claim that Dove has grown by 100% in shampoos and by 42% in soaps. Dove is the largest premium brand in the Hindustan Unilever portfolio, says Rajaram Narayanan, vice president, hair care and Lakme, HUL. Now the Dove portfolio delivers Rs 400 crore in sales. Of this, the soap, or cleansing bar, as HUL executives would call it accounts for only Rs 200 crore. The rest comes from hair care, a category that Dove entered in India about two years back. The rise of modern trade formats and an evolving consumer has also ensured that even emerging categories like body washes and hair conditioners get more buyers. Dove has capitalised on this trend. Apart from distribution in modern format stores, where Dove claims to be one of the leading brands with 11.54% share, the brand has also entered adjacent categories. In body washes, Dove claims to be nearly 19% of the market, while hair conditioners get the brand sales of around Rs 40 crore. Dove did what it does best all over the world not use supermodels to endorse the brand. Rather it got real women who used the product to give testimonials of their experience with the brand. In India, Doves brand team in the 1990s, led by Harish Manwani, now Unilevers president , Asia, Africa, Central & Eastern Europe, decided to adopt the same line of thought for the Indian market too. In some ways the brand was the opposite of Lux, the beauty bar of film stars. Dove showed beauty in ordinary people, says cinematographer and film director, Rajiv Menon, who was involved in making the earliest ads for Dove.

Choosing Brand Elements

Brand elements are those trademarks devices that serve to identify and differentiate the brand. Most strong brands employ multiple brand elements. DOVE has distinctive dove logo.

Brand element can be chosen to build as much as brand equity as possible. The test of the brand building ability of these elements is what consumers think or feel about the product if they only knew about the brand element. A brand element provides positive contribution to brand equity.

Brand evolution: the Dove story The Dove Campaign for Beauty has made the topic of beauty itself controversial, but marketers have kept the message itself positive. The message: Real beauty can only be found on the inside and every woman deserves to feel beautiful. The image: Real beauty is portrayed by women who do not have "runway model" on their resumes -- they are the women passing by in grocery aisles or sitting in the office next door. The result: A dialog between Dove and its consumers about the definition of beauty. Dove's marketing push defied conventional stereotypes and advocated for unconventional beauty and selfesteem. But before Unilever committed to the controversial campaign, it secured evidence that the majority of their consumers would relate to it. "The Real Truth About Beauty," a global research report commissioned by Dove, reported that only two percent of women worldwide describe themselves as beautiful. This is what sets Dove apart from other brands: its beauty campaigns touched a cultural nerve by challenging the current super-thin, silky-hair, perfect skin standard. The campaign spurred conversations in the media and among product consumers. Ultimately Dove's brand image grew because people began associating concepts of true beauty with Dove and its products. Since the brand was launched in 1957, the Dove advertising message has been a constant: It's not soap. It's a beauty bar. The picture of cream pouring into the bar was the iconic image Dove used in ads for nearly five decades.

In 2002, Unilever downsized from 1,600 brands to 400, nominating Dove to be one of its master brands. No longer just a beauty bar, Dove was to be a beauty brand, encompassing products such as body wash, deodorant, hair care and body lotion. Nothing in its heritage had prepared the brand to represent all of these functions. Dove now had to come up with a message that could speak for all its products. "The exploration for this advertising is as interesting as the result," said Deighton. The Campaign for Real Beauty, conceived in 2002, united the entire Dove product line under one message, delivered via traditional media. Ads featuring women who were not models appeared on billboards, and invited people to vote whether these real women were "fab" or "fat." The billboards were placed strategically in locations such as Grand Central Station, where they would be sure to catch the eye of producers and reporters. The intention of the advertisement was to engage people to participate in the campaign, and at that they were successful. While "fat" eventually logged the most votes, Dove marketers were not discouraged. They decided to take the concept a step further and talk about self-esteem. The Campaign for Beauty expanded into the Self-Esteem Campaign during the 2005 Super Bowl. The message in the commercial had an enormous impact and the story was picked up by credible media and bloggers alike. Dove has gained market share in all of its five major beauty categories, from bar soap, body wash, hair care to deodorant.