Success Story of Durex: How Durex Emerged into a Formidable Brand in the Indian Condom Market
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With wide range of products and stimulating ad campaigns, Durex has made it a desirable brand among young men and women in India
It is hard to believe that Durex had negligible presence in India during 2015, despite India being the largest market for condoms by sheer volume. Being the world’s biggest condom brand, people expected Durex to sweep the market from the very word go. But that never happened and Durex was practically invisible with just 1.4 percent share, while the Indian condom market was dominated by brands like Manforce, Moods, Kamasutra, Skore and Kohinoor with double digit market shares respectively.
Even during 2016, durex improved its share from just 1.4 percent to 1.7 percent, a kind of snail’s pace, even though the market was growing at a healthy rate.
However, things began to shake up when Durex launched its wacky ‘Jeans’ campaign endorsed by the actor Ranveer Singh. The concept of the ad was, a pack of two condoms, the slimmest, can be tucked in your jeans packet and can give it a safe hide out. To campaign was centered on the idea that ‘The condom packet disappears in your jeans pocket’. However rival brands ridiculed it. In fact one of the brand managers of a leading condom brand went overboard and said ‘the brand is already invisible and now that it says that it will disappear in the pocket”. The Chief Marketing officer of a condom brand told, “Condoms in India are sold by chemists, it is more of a push and not a pull product”.
However, the campaign shook up the competition and Durex began to get noticed by the public. This helped the brand get 2.8 percent market in the year 2018. But the Durex Mutual Climax campaign rolled out in the year 2019 set the stage for Durex to take that big leap in the Indian condom market. This campaign gave great leverage for Durex as it talked about female sexuality and the need for women to enjoy orgasm. #OrgasmEquality started trending on social media. Reason: Durex engaged women.
So far, condom brand advertisements were male dominant and depicted women as an object of desire. Sex was presented more of a ‘man’ thing while women just played a part. For the first time in India, Durex changed the narrative and focused on Mutual Climax, which is to effective highlight the orgasm for women. This was projected in the ad campaign as many surveys have pointed out that nearly 70% of the women don’t experience orgasm during sex. Though the ad campaign made ‘heads turn’, it wasn’t a great success for the brand in terms of volume and reach. Still Durex was way behind few Indian brands.
In the October 2020, Durex rolled out ‘invisible’ – dubbed as the thinnest condom in India with a tagline ‘It's so thin that it’s almost invisible!’ Even before they could measure the success of the invisible, pandemic hit the country hard and people were forced to say indoors. But Durex utilized it brilliants to its advantage and rolled out quirky digital campaigns particularly aimed at urging people to stay indoors. They smartly advised to people to remain safe and indirectly saying have more sex. In one of the campaigns, Durex used a smart creative titled ‘The longer you stay in, the better you perform’.
In the mid of 2021, Durex became a highly visible brand. It piped Kamasutra to become the second biggest condom brand in India with 13.8 percent market share in value and fifth biggest in terms of volume.
With increased awareness among men and women, consumers today expect more from condom brands than just protection. Durex was quick enough to understand the consumer needs and started giving products that enhanced sexual pleasure without compromising on contraception effectiveness. Durex made smart use of the advertising and creative social media campaigns that aimed at better engagement with their target audience and thus increased consumption. Durex has created highly creative and yet highly result-oriented digital campaigns to win consumer trust and goodwill.
One of the key differentiators that lead to Durex’s quick penetration is its brand positioning. Durex never positioned itself as a leading condom brand, rather it positioned itself as a sexual wellness brand. In addition to condoms, Durex has introduced wide range of sexual wellness products to ensure consumers enjoy enhanced sexual pleasure without compromising on safety during sex.
This proved to a key differentiator and people started to react positively for Durex. While most condom brands simply focused on objectifying women in their communications, Durex on the other hand used inclusive campaign in which topics such as women’s orgasms and sexual pleasure were highlighted. As sex is a not a one-way act, Durex was smart enough to include women-centric issues. Durex also made excellent use of digital platforms and brought out quirky campaigns that went viral. Durex achieved top of the mind recall and increased sales through smart campaign.
In addition to that, Durex also advertised itself as a condom brand and used a pull strategy boldly. Since the introduction of condoms in India, condom brands merely pushed its product as a commodity through chemists. Thus, only those brands that offered more margins to pharmacies enjoy greater sales as chemists pushed only those brands. Durex introduced a disruptive sales methodology, where it focused on ‘pull’ strategy making consumers ask for the brand.
Because of the constant pull campaign through digital platforms, Reckitt, which sells Durex brand in India, ensure that the brand is available in many stores across the country, including super markets and large retail chains.
Despite Durex making its way deep into the Indian condom market, Manforce still leads the pack, making it the largest selling brand in India. However the pace with which Durex penetrated the market is commendable. Thus, Durex is fast emerging as the preferred brand in India with increased presence across length and breadth of India.