Communication related to children’s diapers is quite common but the same can’t be said for adult diapers. Often a taboo subject, one doesn’t hear much about the category or the players who function in the segment. But Friends Adult Diapers is here with its first television campaign, which is probably India’s first adult diaper TVC.
Created by Curious Films, the camping shines the spotlight on the adult diaper category through an endearing and light-hearted story. The ad film begins with a very angry senior citizen complaining to a young member of her family about how her husband has started going off on adventures without informing her ever since the boy bought Friends Adult Diapers for him. With the thought ‘Wahi Masti, Phir Se’, the ad film induces the story with enough friendly banter and fun to bring the category into the public eye without weighing heavily on the more disheartening statistics coming out of the country when it comes to senior citizens.
Talking about the idea behind the campaign and why it was necessary to change their approach, Kartik Johari, VP and Marketing, Nobel Hygiene, said, “I think traditionally Friends has always been a brand that has advertised through print or other mediums and tried to focus on educating senior citizens. However, some time ago, after doing some primary studies, we reached the conclusion that we are targeting the wrong user group. The learning that came out of the study was that our users are our biggest roadblock. The topic is quite a taboo and maybe they are a little ashamed in even bringing up the subject with their family members. So, since they are reluctant to talk about the issue, we realised that senior citizens will be more receptive of our message if it was coming from their own family members and caretakers. Hence, we decided that we would take a caretaker’s perspective and illuminate the other side of the line.”
The brand, which has invested more than Rs 10 crore in the campaign, has taken Madison on board for its media planning. The campaign will run on all GECs and news channels. The brand has also associated with a few shows like Dance India Dance.
Elaborating on the media plan for the campaign, Johari said, “The campaign has been optimised in a way that we can capture maximum number of eyeballs. The ad is fairly concentrated in urban and tier I metro areas. We haven’t taken a regional-heavy path because we realise that purchasing and using adult diapers daily is quite an investment and not everyone has the means to afford it on a daily basis even though they may need to.”
But despite their decision to keep the campaign mostly urban and metro centric, the brand has put heavy focus on the four southern states.
“From a regional perspective what most brands do is once they have a few GECs under their belt, they go to each state and also pick up top three of their regional channels but we have cherry-picked our regions. Our team in the south is the strongest and also the awareness and disposable income in the south tends to be a smidgen higher than the rest of the country. There is also voracious consumption of regional content in the south. Therefore, we have ensured that each ad is dubbed into the language of that particular state so that there is no gap in understanding,” added Johari.
The adult diapers market is around Rs 400-500 crore right now in India and Friends Adult Diapers, who is the biggest player nationally, has a market share of about 68 per cent. Compared to the baby diapers markets, which is one of the fastest growing FMCG categories in the country with a market size of about Rs 4,500 crore, the adult diapers market is just 10 per cent of it.
Nobel Hygiene, which is also present in the baby diapers category with the brand Teddyy, is seeing a growth of over 45 per cent year-on-year when it comes to their adult diapers brand. Johari sees great potential in the segment and feels that there is much to be achieved when it comes to the adult diapers category in India.
“Adult diapers has just about 3 per cent market penetration nationally and we have a long way to go. I think adult diapers is one of the very few categories within FMCG which has such low penetration percentage and has such a clear growth trajectory. For many other FMCG brands, a growth rate of 5-6 per cent y-o-y is considered excellent but we are growing by over 45 per cent y-o-y and we will continue to see this growth hopefully for the next decade or so,” said Johari.
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