LUX: a soap to stardom

Lux has been in Pakistan for over 50 years. Unlike many brands, Lux’s positioning has not changed significantly; the target audience has remained young women.

Lux uses star appeal to drive the brand message. Over the last 40 to 50 years, top actresses, in Pakistan and across Asia, have endorsed Lux. An important reason for choosing film stars is the mass appeal they draw among audiences. Only in recent years has Lux included women in its advertising who do not belong to the TV or film industry.

From a category perspective, Lux has been the market leader. In the early years, the focus was on driving usership (in those days, consumers did not use soap regularly). If you look at the earlier advertising, it almost seems as if they are trying to justify the use of soap; it is not about switching. Later, the communication moved away from the awareness aspect and the emphasis goes on making Lux the top choice. From the task of category creation and encouraging women to use soap, the brand takes on an aspirational positioning to ensure brand loyalty.

Coloured soaps were introduced about 15 years ago; before that, they came in white only. Typically, once a category becomes larger, the need to differentiate arises and this is often done through colours. As the market leader, Lux has the responsibility of driving category upgrades and for the last two years, we have been working on converting consumers to liquid soap.

Our media mix is driven by what our consumers choose. Earlier, print was the only medium; this was followed by cinema, then TV and in between radio and OOH. Now, over the last four to five years, digital has overtaken all other media except TV. Our priority in terms of share of ad spend is TV, followed by digital, OOH and finally print – the latter only for the Lux Style Awards.

Raheel Pasha Khan is Marketing Director, Personal Care, Unilever.

First published in THE DAWN OF ADVERTISING IN PAKISTAN (1947-2017), a Special Report published by DAWN on March 31, 2018.