Marketing Strategy and SWOT analysis of LAKMÉ

Founded in 1952, by the Tata group LAKMÉ is one of the most popular cosmetics brands in India. This homegrown brand was the first one that introduced makeup to Indian women, who have been their main focus from the very beginning. The brand has been present in the market for over 50 years and considers itself an expert in Indian beauty. LAKMÉ production includes color cosmetics, and skincare products, and offers beauty services in its chain of LAKMÉ beauty salons in India. To understand the reasons behind LAKMÉ’s success let’s dive deeper and go through the marketing strategy and SWOT analysis of the brand.

Let’s start from the Vision and Mission statements of the brand to make our job easier and more thorough.

Vision statement of LAKMÉ:  

LAKMÉ wants to focus on encouraging people to do more, helping people feel good, and reducing their impact on the environment.

LAKMÉ stays true to its parent company Hindustan Unilever, as the vision statement of the brand is very similar to the one of HUL. As I understand, the brand strives to empower its customers, make them feel, and look good. It wants to offer better products and services, and continuous self-improvement inspires big changes for the whole environment and world. 

Mission Statement of LAKMÉ:

“An Ally To The Classic Indian Woman, LAKMÉ Inspires Her To Express The Unique Beauty And Sensuality Within Enabling Her To Realize The Potency Of Her Beauty.“

The mission statement of the brand identifies that their main focus is women and especially Indian women. It becomes clear that the brand clearly understands what it wants to do and why.  It wants to show that Indian women are special, powerful, and unique.

Now, it’s time to find out what branding strategies are used by LAKMÉ to position the market.

Let’s discuss the following post by the brand on their Facebook page to identify the strategies it uses.

We can see a very typical post for a cosmetics company representing a product. This post is one of those that you would normally expect to see on a social media page of a beauty brand. Very vibrant, colorful, sleek, bright, juicy, and eye-catching. We can see different colors in the picture, but the red color is the one seeking attention.

What comes to your mind when you see or think about the red color? Let me guess! Love? Passion? Romance? Beauty? Confidence? After seeing the picture and reading the post you want to grab, use, and feel the product. The red color, the name of the product, and very alluring writing in the post clearly indicate that this brand belongs to the Lover archetype.  

Now let’s find out what Lover archetype stands for.

Desire: getting affection and attaining sensuous pleasure

Aim: building a relationship with people, experiences, environments, and work that they adore  

Strategy: continuously working on becoming more appealing and attractive both emotionally and physically, and in other possible ways.  

Let’s now go through the messaging levels of Lover archetype:

Level one: fascinating, alluring, and falling in love with an idea, person, product, etc.

Level two: aspire awesome sex and/or amazing romantic relationship, love affair. 

Level tree: commitment to what/whom you love and staying true to your blessedness.

Level four: accepting yourself, spiritual love and sense euphoria

The Lover Brand archetype would be favorable and promising for your brand if:

• their use helps people to acquire friendship or love
• their function includes cherishing and promoting beauty, close interaction between people, communication and is connected with romance and passion
• their pricing is from moderate to high
• it desires to be positively differentiated from lower-priced brands.

Brand Archetypes. Why do we need them in practice?

Our communication strategy may have multiple messaging approaches. But there is some logic that unifies all these and it is called communication based on the archetypal branding. A company may have many messages, but they do not have something in common. For example “Do everything easily”, “Go ahead and be powerful” or Dig deeper and be experienced”.

These 3 quotes have different goals and bring different subconscious effects. One is about Being a Hero, another is about gaining more experience. These are 2 different directions of messaging and the logics of Brand archetypes bring more uniqueness and clearness here. Just read the book “8 steps to a complete archetypal branding” and you will have more experience in communication based on archetypes.

After identifying the archetype of LAKMÉ, it’s time to look at the SWOT analysis of the brand.

Strengths

High Brand awareness: LAKMÉ is a renowned and popular brand in the beauty and cosmetics industry. It has been in the market for over 50 years and has specific relevance to India.

Product variety: LAKMÉ is known for its extensive product line. The brand’s product portfolio includes cosmetics and skincare products for face, eyes, lips, nails in a wide range of colors and relevant for different skin concerns.    

Strong parent company:  LAKMÉ is owned by Hindustan Unilever which gives the brand plenty of advantages.  Thanks to strong parent brand LAKMÉ has access to the extensive distribution system of HUL and increases its availability in the market.

Celebrity endorsement: At this moment, Kareena Kapoor and Ananya Pandey two very popular and famous Indian actresses are the ambassadors of LAKMÉ. Celebrity endorsement helps the brand to position itself in the minds of present and prospective consumers.

Weaknesses

Limited presence in the premium market: LAKMÉ is known to be a leader in the value for money segment. The brand is overall a leader in the market in terms of price and product range, but it is not as powerful and popular in the premium segment which is growing at a very high rate.

Differentiation problem: The product range of LAKMÉ often creates disorientation among customers. Many of LAKMÉ’s products are very popular and are known for their quality and performance. On the other hand, some products of the company are completely ignored because they are not well differentiated.

Price positioning: Low price competition becomes possible because of LAKMÉ’s price positioning in some categories. This makes already existing severe competition for the company more intense.

Opportunities

Changing lifestyle: Due to continuous migrations, change of education and lifestyle comes the change of preferences and tastes. People have become more attentive to their appearance and are taking more care of themselves to look better and be more appealing.

Growth of premium segment: The demand for premium segment goods is growing and the industry of grooming is not an exception as well. This is an amazing opportunity for LAKMÉ, who owns a chain of beauty salons in India and is a part of this industry.

Improving brand image: Being the largest fashion event in India, LAKMÉ fashion week can be a very prospective way of future improvements that LAKMÉ can make for its brand image. The brand can work on its image by doing collaborations with top designers participating in this event. Also, LAKMÉ can do more celebrity endorsements which are known to work great for the brand.

Threats

International brands entering India: The beauty and cosmetics industry is continuously growing, and many companies manage to successfully enter new markets all over the world. If international beauty companies extend and enter the Indian market, it can seriously affect LAKMÉ and pun boundaries on the brand’s growth rate.

Fake products: Counterfeit products were always a problem for well-known companies. Fake and imitated products can have very damaging effects on the brand image, as a result, have negative effects on the overall growth of the brand.

Rising allergy cases: Many studies indicate that there is rapid growth in allergy cases around the world. This is caused by different reasons including changing lifestyle. Increasing allergy cases and more sensitive skin can be a big problem for brands in the beauty and cosmetics industry, as it may cause a drop in sales and dictate further improved formulas to be safe for consumers.

Now, it’s time to move on to the segmentation strategy of LAKMÉ.

To identify the segment chosen by LAKMÉ , let’s look at the following commercial of the brand.

We can see an energetic, positive, young, beautiful, and confident woman as the main focus of the commercial. Alongside this, there is a young, good looking man whose task is to transfer the main message and idea of ​​the commercial.

The appearance and outlook of the young woman is the central topic being discussed throughout the video. She is collectively representing the target segment of the company and the man awakes problems that may or should concern others like her.

He tells her to be very caring and consistent about her beauty and appearance and offers her LAKMÉ product as a solution to stay good-looking and fresh.

After discussing the commercial and understanding the characteristics that the woman in the commercial carries, we can say with confidence, that the segment that LAKMÉ chose to target is Chardonnay.

So, who are Chardonnays?

Lifestyle and Values: Chardonnays are very active, energetic people with a very positive and optimistic outlook toward life. People belonging to this segment are very open and spontaneous in life and like to share their feelings and emotions with people who are close and dear to them.

They are very picky about their appearance and like to be attractive to others, especially to the opposite sex. Engaging, interesting, and new things can catch representatives of this segment easily. It is important to mention, that despite keeping with the time, heritage and values have a very special place in the mind of Chardonnays.

Chardonnays are mainly young professionals or students living in big, impulsive, and active cities. They love the drive and diversity of this type of place, active social life. Attending social events, clubs, and doing shopping are inseparable from the life of Chardonnay.

Their income is mainly from the middle to high, and they consider success, a good career, and financial stability very important. The reason for this is their love for spending money and buying things they like.   

Shopping Preferences: When it comes to Chardonnays, appearance is one of the most important things for them. They take care of the way they look very much and one way for them to do this is shopping. Shopping can be considered a lifestyle for this segment as it is one of their favorite activities to do. They are very trendy and know about all the novelties in the market.

They give big importance to the quality of the products. Chardonnays prefer to buy less, but be sure that the product is good. Also, they are very driven to advertisings that can be associated with them.   

Interesting facts about the Chardonnay segment: 

• The Internet is an essential part of this segment’s life. It is the main source of information for them as well as a platform to spend their life. They like to share pictures, activities, memories, and overall moments from their lives on this platform.
• Chardonnays love watching TV, and especially sitcoms. There they can find personages with whom they can be associated, and who will aspire them with their style and wisdom.
• Magazines have a very special place in the life of Chardonnays. They use magazines as the main way of staying up to date. They love reading topics related to love, beauty, fashion trends, etc. 
• Nevertheless, the family is very dear to chardonnays, but friends are in the first place for them. The reason behind this is that friends are people who are associated with social life, active routine, and fun.

16 Personalities (why do you need them in your business?)

This was one of the main secrets of the success of LAKMÉ- Right targeting.  Chardonnays are one of the most powerful and socialized segments in 16 personalities among young people. They are very optimistic. They like to enjoy life and do beautiful activities. You also should choose the right target (ideal buyer persona) for your business and in this context, you should research all 16 Personalities, 16 types of clients that you may meet during your daily business and marketing activity.

Here is the book “16 Personalities” (eBook version),which includes all these types of clients. This book will give you a key to the heart of your dream client. By recognizing all 16 Personalities, you will easily find a target customer that matches your brand.

Summing up, LAKMÉ can be considered an expert in the beauty and cosmetics industry with a very strong and special place in the Indian market. I hope, this blog was an insightful and interesting way to get to know this brand better and understand the reasons behind its operations. Check out the main page of our website for more posts like this.