Dettol Marketing

Dettol Brand is strongly positioned in the market as “The best killing germs antiseptic”. It is market leader and it has strong credibility and trust, it’s a top of mind in its category and it has two value propositions: functional (protection for germs and killing wounds) and emotional (love and care from a mother taking care of her child). This emotional campaign was supported with a strong advertising campaign where a mother is shown reading a letter from her son who is in a boarding school, the mother wasn’t worried about her son because he was away from home because she felt he was safe with the protection of Dettol.
The campaign helped in making emotional connection with consumers and people remembered the campaign even long after it was discontinued. Everyone knows Dettol as a brand who helps you protect your family’s hygiene and health, it was a “must-have” product for every household in United Kingdome and India. ACNielsen made a study that backed this theory up stating that Dettol is in the top rank of popularity as one of the most trusted brands.
But as it is strongly positioned, everyone thinks about Dettol as a synonymous of “germ killer” and “antiseptic”. When they tried to introduce several new brand extensions to the market it was very difficult to change people’s mind about seeing the brand for other purposes or uses instead of just antiseptic. Most of these brand extensions didn’t have the expected results and had very poor sales level, for example: Medicated plasters, shaving cream, talc, floor cleaner and mouthwash: they didn’t achieve the expected results in sales and market share was not significant. They found competition in those categories, brands that were already positioned in the market and Dettol couldn’t compete. The only product that was successful in sales was the soap and liquid soap, probably because these products are strongly associated with germ killing. It achieved 44% of value share in liquid soap.

It was very difficult and maybe inappropriate to introduce all these new products extensions with the Dettol name, maybe they could have used another name because the “Dettol” brand was so associated to “antiseptic”, that it became generic among the target market. For example, it would be similar to say that “Kleenex” wants to sell shampoo. People just wouldn’t accept it and it would be very difficult to change this strong brand association to one specific concept or product.