Surfing On The Tide
Last year P&G launched its Tide bar to attack Rin. In fact, P&G has deliberately pegged its Tide Bar 50 Paise lower than Rin Supreme bar. As consumers use combination of bar and soap, this market was very important for HLL. To counter the price war started by P & G, HLL has played extra ordinary move. HLL has migrated Rin Supreme Bar to Surf Excel Bar.
HLL has hit the two birds in one stone. They tried to stop the Tide and Ariel together in move. The entry of the Tide Bar was the direct challenge to HLL's dominance in the the detergent bar market. Both Tide and Rin has similar USP ie. "Whiteness" while Surf Excel's USP is "Stain Removal". The new Surf Excel detergent bar will help HLL to counter competition not only from Tide but other competitors as now Surf is equiped with stain removal property as well as with Rin's Whiteness property. Thus this move has stopped the dilution of Surf Brand.
"The migration was done to enable better differentiation of brands within the existing portfolio. Rin Supreme was on the stain removal platform which goes with the Surf Excel platform of stain removal and therefore the migration was synergistic," commented HLL's spoke person,"In fact, it completes the Surf Excel brand portfolio by providing a bar within the Surf Excel franchise. The differentiation also enables us to better leverage opportunities at the mid-price segment through Rin Advanced."
