Good Knight Fast Card: How a two cent product

became the most successful insect repellent launch in

history
Siddhant Lahiri and Navonil Chatterjee
Source: The WARC Prize for Asian Strategy, Shortlisted, 2015
Downloaded from WARC

This case study describes how Good Knight, an India mosquito repellent brand, increased sales and
penetration in rural India by creating an innovative new product variant that was easy to use, cheap
and effective.

Mosquitoes are ubiquitous in India but there is low penetration of mosquito repellents; even Good
Knight, the market leader, was suffering from static growth.
The price-conscious consumers who did purchase repellents tended to buy cheap ineffective
brands, which tarnished the reputation of all brands.
Targeting small-town and rural Indians, Good Knight created a new product category that offered
efficacy, economy and simplicity: Fast Card, a low-cost, high-performance ignitable piece of card
that killed mosquitoes quickly.
The launch campaign – ‘Fattack Se Furr’ (Gone in a Jiffy) – focused on regional, grassroot-level
activation to engage media-dark consumers, followed by outdoor and and point-of-sale
activations.
The brand more than tripled its sales target and increased penetration by introducing many new
users into the market.

Siddhant Lahiri and Navonil Chatterjee

Campaign details
Brand owner: Godrej Consumer Products
Leading agency: JWT
Budget: 500k – 1 million
Country: India
Industry: Cleaners, detergents, air care; Non-prescription, OTC products
Media: Cinema; Events and experiential; Outdoor, out-of-home; Point-of-purchase, in-store; Radio; Television

Executive summary

Market background and cultural context

The great Indian irony: mosquitos are everywhere, but there is low penetration of mosquito
repellants.

Mosquitoes are a ubiquitous Indian problem. While there are various kinds of insect repellants available (liquid
vaporisers, coils, aerosol sprays, topical ointments, mats, etc.), the entire Rs.3,000 crore ($500 million)
Household Insecticide (HI) category has only 44% penetration.

Good Knight, the market leader at 37.2% market share, also has only 23% penetration. As the category driver, it
is seeing its own penetration grow gradually, but the category penetration remains stagnant.

The irony grows: in small town and rural India, where the mosquito problem is greater, the story is
even bleaker

Penetration in rural India is even lower – 28% for the category, and 10% for Good Knight.

Many houses are not concrete, not closed from all sides, and doors and windows are often kept open during the
day. This makes them particularly susceptible to mosquitoes – and more in need of a highly efficacious solution.

Sacrificing quality for affordability leads to dissatisfied consumers – and non-believers in the
category!

Affordability is a major concern. The most popular form of repellants – coils – cost Rs.30 (50 cents) a pack, but
are instead bought loose every day at Rs.3 (5 cents) per piece. This affordability problem means that consumers
end up buying inferior and ineffective products. This compromise in quality ultimately leads to consumer
dissatisfaction with the entire category. Hence, India's rural areas, where 70% of our population resides,
contributes a mere 30% to the category's sales.

The scope for the growth of the entire category lay in the under-utilised markets – which did not have the ideal
product solution to woo them.

The market leader's burden: this wasn't a regular challenge about gaining share or fighting decline – what we
set out to do as the market leader was achieve growth by inducting new users into the category and driving
adoption amongst non-believers.

Primary challenge

In a market full of disillusioned non-believers, how do you convert them into new users and drive relevance and
usage for a new product?

Secondary challenges

To grow the category in any substantial manner, it was essential to have an indelible impact acros the breadth
of our target audience – the small towners across the nation. Therefore, we had to go both wide (pan India) and
deep (into the Indian small towns and villages)

But in a market as regionally and culturally diverse as India, how do you talk to everybody?

Objectives
To grow the household insecticide category by recruiting new users
To grow the rural market through new users and the urban market via consumption
Rs.500 crores ($83.3 million) cumulative target in five years – with Rs.40 crores ($6.7 million) in the first
year

Insight and strategic thinking

Step 1: Defining our audience

Town class targeting: The scope for growth of the entire HI category lay in the unpenetrated markets – the small
towns and the rural areas. As the category leader, we chose to take on the burden of expanding penetration,
and decided to go after consumers in these markets. The idea was to aim for the towns with populations below 1
million people, and villages in the hinterland.

Social strata targeting: Within these geographies, our target audience were the lower SEC consumers – SEC
C/D/E – who were frustrated with the lack of an ideal product solution which could combine high efficacy with
great economy. This frustration was turning them off the category.

Therefore, in a nutshell, our target audience was:

1. small town and rural india

2. SEC C/D/E, disillusioned masses
3. Pan-India: across regions and cultures

Step 2: Solving their problem

Typically, this audience would use natural solutions like burning neem (azadirachta indica) leaves, mosquito
nets or, often, nothing! To appeal to these people, we had to create a product solution which ticked three
fundamental boxes:

Efficacy: Our research showed that their day-to-day lives were full of instances which required a solution that
could instantly kill the mosquitoes. All repellents in the market take time to act – and are thus considered
ineffective and unpopular.

Economy: Coils are currently most popular due to their low cost. The liquid vapourisers, which cost Rs.72
($1.20) and last up to 60 days, actually have a lower cost of use per day, but are unpopular due to the larger
cost upfront. Hence, both the cost of purchase and the cost per use are major factors.

Simplicity: Coils are popular because they only need to be set on fire to work. Other solutions like aerosol
sprays and topical ointments have never found favour here. Even liquid vapourisers are unpopular because they
rely on electricity, which itself is unreliable in rural India.

Opportunity: No product available in the market ticked all the three boxes simultaneously and to the satisfactory
degree.

Our move: Create a whole new category – the best combination of economy and efficacy.

Fast Card

Instant relief in one rupee

Fast Card is a small card, coated in mosquito repellent – all you have to do is set it on fire and all mosquitoes die
within three minutes! The best part? Fast Card comes in packets of ten, costing Rs.10 (17 cents) per pack.
Therefore:

The USP: instant effect – mosquitoes are dead within three minutes

Additional value: Each fast card cost re.1 (2 cents) and lasted four hours, providing the best ROI (return on
insecticide)!
Creative and/or Channel execution
The creation of a new product – and a whole new category!

Fast Card wasn't just a new product – it was also the birth of a new category, because in India, there were no
card-based mosquito repellents. It was economical, efficacious and easy to use.

Step 1: The national, pan-India launch via television and radio

We used mass media to introduce our product and highlight its benefits.

Usage education: This was a new format, so we had to educate consumers about the correct usage regime
(unlike other formats which work through the night, this was a new, efficacious smaller duration format). Hence,
we popularised this through "Fold-Fire-Foo", the creatively titled three-step process of folding the card, lighting it
and then blowing it off.

It was essential to establish Fast Card as a low-cost, high efficacy product, while making sure that our low price
is not translated as low quality.

The big communication idea: Fattack Se Furr (Gone in a Jiffy)

We wanted to convey our product's USP in a fun and memorable manner. Thus we coined the line 'Fattack Se
Furr', meaning the eradication of mosquitoes in a jiffy. This line became the cornerstone for all creative across
the country.

Step 2: Going into the hinterlands

Our potential customers were spread across the country – so, if we had to reach out to them and convert them,
we needed a pan-India, nationwide mass media campaign. However, it was essential to keep a few pointers in
mind:

Employing familiarity: adoption is higher if you are 'one of them'

Our target were the small towns and rural areas. Many in these areas (often referred to as the hinterland) feel
disconnected from the routine nationwide messaging. To succeed with this audience, it was essential that they
felt that we are one of them – instead of external, alien marketers forcefully pushing a product onto them.

Employing customisation: in India, one size doesn't fit all (states)!

For sustained engagement and bonding between our product and all the different regional clusters of
consumers, we understood that we needed communication which would seem specifically crafted to each
region. Hence, the need for sharply customised, colloquial below-the-line communications. Based on business
considerations, we chose four key Indian states to focus on in the first phase: Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal
and Maharashtra. Moreover, these four states were chosen because:

1. Good Knight was not the market leader in any of them

2. Besides the rural population, over 70% of the urban population in these markets belonged to SEC C/D/E –
and was thus relevant for Fast Card.

Extensive research was done to understand the nuances of each state. Given India's diversity, communicating
with people across various regions, states, languages and cultures is a mammoth task. Our teams went into the
interiors of these four states to understand their respective subtle nuances so that we could incorporate them
into our communication. Here's what we discovered:

Bihar: The women here demonstrated a remarkable affinity towards loud, bright colours – be it in their attire or
interior décor. Their love for loud, eye-catching colours was incorporated into our creatives for Fast Card.

West Bengal: Not only is this state women-dominated, but there is also tremendous love for art and culture – so
we chose to popularise 'Fattack Se Furr' using traditional Bengali art.

Uttar Pradesh: The erstwhile princely state is known as the land of poetry. Hence, we incorporated local poetry
and the flavor of their language into our creatives. We thus enveloped our proposition into traditional 'muhavres'
(rhymed proverbs).

Maharashtra: Strong and hard-working, the Maharashtrian woman is a keen home maker and believes in
personally looking into matters of her home. Thus, the creative for Maharashtra is focused on family scenarios,
with the woman as the centre of power.

Grassroot-level activation

In Maharashtra, the 'Pandarpur Mela' is a huge annual pilgrimage – almost like a smaller version of the Kumbh
Mela (a mass pilgrimage held every year, and considered to be the world's largest religious gathering). This
event gave us the canvas to reach out to millions. Moreover, we also made our presence felt in media-dark
areas via Movies on Wheels (mobile cinemas, which had our TVCs inserted within popular Bollywood films).

Our learnings about each state became the bedrock for all the statewide communications – from activation, to
outdoors and point-of-sale, all of it held together by our brand promise: 'Fattack Se Furr'.

Performance against objectives

A two-cent product. Over $20 million revenue!

Objective: Rs.500 crores ($83.3 million) cumulative target in five years, with Rs.40 crores ($6.7 million) in the
first year

Result: more than tripled our target – a Re.1 product hit Rs.135 crores in sales within a year! (that is a two cent
product earning $21.5 million within a year!)
Objective 1: grow the market by recruiting new users

Objective 2: grow the rural market through new users and the urban market via consumption

Fast Card inducted many new users into the category. All India, a significant 11% were new recruits; in rural
areas, a whopping 25%! Major contribution of new users to volumes: 50% at rural, 20% at urban.
Even one year after launch, growth is much faster than other formats and the entire category!

Localising the brand with statewise nuances led to a huge jump in consumption of Fast Card.

As a bonus, there was huge acceptance within the trade. Fast Card had the fastest ramp-up of distribution in the
history of the category.

Lessons learned
There were two major lessons for us in this case:

1. Don't build a product – solve a need

The battle is already half-won when a product is built using a relevant, compelling consumer need. If, as a
brand, one can solve a problem that consumers have battled with for years, the latter will embrace you with
open arms. This is the power of a brand built on a consumer insight.

2. Don't inflict from the outside – instead, infect from within

When communicating to an audience, especially one that is already distrustful and sceptical, it always helps to
be a part of them rather than communicate as an outsider. Instead of being a faceless organisation which
making the same claim of mosquito removal like countless other brands, we instead chose to show (rather than
tell) the audience that we were just like them – and they responded with their trust.

Footnotes
1 IMRB Research Household Panel Data, September 2014

2 Client sales data

3 IMRB, Household Panel Data, September 2014

4 IMRB, Household Panel Data, September 2014

5 Client sales data

6 Client distribution data

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