McNroe targets Rs100-crore business in women's grooming vertical

McNroe, the personal grooming company, is looking to focus more on its women’s grooming vertical under 'Secret Temptation'. Along with expanding its product portfolio by launching a new fragrance 'Turkish Rose', Secret Temptation has also announced a new brand identity.

“This is a brand that is older than Wild Stone. But in the last five years, there has been a dramatic shift in the attitude of a young women and shift in the expectations of these women from lifestyle brands. The women’s deo market is growing faster than the men’s deo segment. The mindset of the consumer is completely different today than what it was and therefore we realised that it was time to reinvent and reinterpret the brand,” said Narendra Kumar Daga, MD, McNroe.

The brand has planned a 360-degree media campaign around this new launch and to publicise their new brand identity, “Own Your Temptation”. They are working with part of CLA with an agency called Dining Table for the campaigns. Daga clarified that while they have roped in different partners for different legs of the campaign, the core idea is Dining Table’s.

Daga said the women’s fragrance market today stands at about Rs 750 crore (including perfumes and deodorants) and they are looking to claim about Rs 100 crore of it by the end of this financial year.

Currently, the women’s vertical contributes about 20% to the overall business and while Daga said that they are looking to net in more from that particular on the back of this renewed focus, he also mentioned that the jump might not be too dramatic.

“We feel that the percentage might go up by 1 or 2 % and that is because Wild Stone is growing at a rapid rate, by 30% last year. So, the percentage contribution from the women’s vertical might not change much in the near future. It is a good problem to have. In the next couple of years, we intend to bring up the percentage contribution to 25-30%,” said Daga.

Elaborating on their communication strategy or philosophy for Secret Temptation, Daga said that it will be completely different from the stance they have taken when it comes to Wild Stone.

“When it comes to Secret Temptation what we will portray is the positive connotations associated with the word ‘temptation’. Girls and women today are more confident than men and are not looking for approval from them. We want to be the voice of these women and that is why the whole ‘Own Your Temptation’ positioning. We want to make temptation a good word. People usually associate it with distractions but often temptation is the driving force behind a lot of actions that we take in life,” said Daga.

The brand has tried to break the clutter and go beyond the norm when it comes to Wild Stone. The men’s fragrance category is notorious for using titillation in their communication but the brand broke away from the mould when they launched their ‘Kunal’ commercials.

“We were a part of that sensual communication. What we realised is that our commercials used to get great organic user interest but people would not share our ads. What we did not have is social currency even though we had a very strong base. We wanted to change this because a deodorant is no longer something that stays in a man’s closet. Young men carry deos to colleges and work too,” said Daga.

The brand believes ‘Kunal’ commercials have earned them great social currency. “We now have ‘Kunal’ WhatsApp jokes,” says Daga.

The brand has also beefed up their digital presence and their digital spends. According to Daga, till the year before last the brand’s digital presence was only 1%. This year, the brand will be spending 8% of their marketing monies on digital. The brand spends about 20% of their overall revenues on marketing annually.

The brand set a revenue target of Rs 500 crore this financial year.

For Daga, the biggest challenge of marketing in this category is penetration.

“We are only a 14-15% penetration category. The challenge here is about how you get newer users to come to category,” said Daga.

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