A long time back, I was the brand manager on Huggies, the Kimberly Clark brand that Unilever distributed across India. Huggies had been the first entrant to the market and had been the market leader for a while, till the entrance of Pampers in the late 2000sNow, here’s something that might surprise many people. Most moms in India did not use diapers. Diaper penetration in India was just ~15% at that time. And this was in Urban India. Diapers were virtually non-existent in rural India.

Why was this?

Well, apart from the simple fact that diapers were expensive as a % of household income compared to the west, there were a bunch of cultural and geographical nuances. Hot weather through most of the year meant that parents felt babies would be uncomfortable in a diaper. Diapers were not considered ‘natural’ fibre. Cloth was considered ‘soft’, and more often than not, diapers were associated with ‘modern,working’ women(cue not good mothers)Most importantly, water dried quickly in India, and washing with water was considered the best way to clean anything – house,floor,face – cleaning with water meant it was purified. In contrast to the west, where water and dampness often meant squalid and unhygienic conditions.

Enter Pampers – They had taken the Chinese market by storm with their ‘golden sleep’ insight – They had cleverly shifted the benefit of mom’s sleep to 12 hour sleep for the baby. And even more brilliantly, connected sleep to a baby’s mental development. Watch their Chinese commercial here:

Pampers Golden Sleep China

This was the perfect unlock – it removed the guilt from moms that they were using diapers on their babies for their convenience and made it their responsibility to ensure that babies slept well, and therefore had good mental development. Now Pampers was taking over the Indian market with this insight as well.

This was well documented and reported on. Read this article from 2010

“With the help of the Beijing Children’s Hospital’s Sleep Research Center, P&G researchers conducted two exhaustive studies between 2005 and 2006, involving 6,800 home visits, and more than 1,000 babies throughout eight cities in China. Instead of cloth, the research subjects were tucked into bed with Pampers. The results: P&G reported that the babies who wore the disposables fell asleep 30 percent faster and slept an extra 30 minutes every night. The study even linked the extra sleep to improved cognitive development, a compelling point in a society obsessed with academic achievement “

Things were looking grim if you were a new brand manager on Huggies. So what did we do? How did we fight back against the world’s biggest CPG brand? And more importantly ,how did we win? =First things first,we had to build out an insight that was equally powerful, yet sufficiently differentiated from Pampers – and they had taken the best positioning possible!

Ok, if baby’s sleep was the #1 concern, what was the other thing that moms were most concerned about? Babies falling sick.

That was a start. So how do you connect babies falling sick to diapers? Hygiene.Yes, germs cause babies to fall sick! And guess where germs live? In wetness!

So, here’s the connection we needed to make – When you use a cloth diaper, babies are sometimes left alone in their own pee. This dampness could lead to germs,which could lead to the baby falling sick. And that’s what we did over here –

Then we addressed the other levers. For the first time, Huggies was available in packs of 2s for the price of a pack of cookies. And then we did a couple of other things . We made sure there were enough TV GRPs on what was tested to be a winning insight and made sure Huggies was available in most stores.

The result?

Huggies was the fastest growing brand in the Unilever brand stable for 2 years in a row that I was there. Revenues doubled, and the diaper category had become the fastest growing category in the CPG market for those 2 years, courtesy the diaper wars!:)

Lesson learnt – If you have to cut a tree, spend 90% of the time sharpening the axe. If you have to win in marketing, spend 90% of the time getting the insight and position right(PMF). The rest will fall in place.