INDONESIANS ARE AFRAID TO ASK FOR HEAD & SHOULDERS

Head & Shoulders (H&S) is the #1 anti-dandruff shampoo globally. But in Indonesia, it was a mere challenger brand. “Clear”, owned by Unilever, sells 55% more bottles of shampoo.

This was despite heavy marketing investment using the same techniques that have elevated H&S to leadership around the world.

When we analysed sales data, we realised that H&S was doing well in the large retail stores, but not in the small Mom & Pop shops (independent, usually family-owned businesses) that make up 50% of sales in the hair care category.

Talking to consumers we realised that H&S’ biggest barrier is… its brand name! Indonesians found Head & Shoulders, very difficult to say. English is not one of Indonesia’s 700 local languages!

This was a huge barrier in small independent shops where you need to ask to receive the brand over the counter.

WE GAVE INDONESIANS PERMISSION TO LAUGH AT MISPRONOUNCIATIONS

Indonesia is a highly collective society. People don’t want to be embarrassed by their inability to pronounce an English language brand name (not knowing English well is a mark of shame).

As a brand that prides itself on building self-confidence, we were unknowingly causing insecurity and doubt.

We would give permission to Indonesians to mispronounce our brand name, indeed we encouraged them to “Say It Proud”.

We would create a campaign that spoke to the heart using humour and cultural messaging to tackle people’s fears and letting them own their difference.

TV would be used to build mass awareness and then we would boost the conversation on social media, which represents 90% of Indonesian digital usage.

Importantly, since many over-the-counter shops were in rural villages where internet penetration was low, we complemented our efforts with local radio, customising by dialect and language.

EVEN OUR BRAND AMBASSADOR STRUGGLED

First, we celebrated the struggle many Indonesians face in pronouncing our brand by releasing a real online bloopers clip of our own veteran brand ambassador, actor Joe Taslim, mispronouncing our brand name during a TV commercial shoot.

User-generated versions from consumers, influencers and even other brands added hundreds of millions more impressions and counting!

We celebrated our 700 languages and dialects with TV messages featuring consumers offering their own version of the H&S brand name, as well as locally customised regional radio spots.

We even produced more than 300 versions of shampoo packs carrying different versions of the Head & Shoulders name – based on the way Indonesians pronounce it.

Finally, we collated all common mispronunciations of our brand – “Heten & soljers”/ “Hed & Solder” – and tweaked our Google search to accept all versions, to ensure Indonesians were taken to the official website.

SALES SKYROCKETED BY +20% and FOR THE FIRST TIME PASSED 10% SHARE

H&S hit 10.4% market share, its highest-ever share, growing 90 Base Point, and sales grew by a whopping +20% – ahead of the category by +17%. H&S took over anti-dandruff category leadership from Clear in Modern Trade – while Clear lost share by 20 Base Points.

H&S became the fastest-growing brand in Mom & Pops shops, growing 60 Base points during the campaign. H&S grew users by +9%, adding 1,900,000 Household users.

Our bloopers video went viral with a total 18M views during the three-month campaign.

The campaign received overwhelming coverage from 50 online articles and even featured in news on CNN Indonesia and GTV, part of the country’s biggest TV and media network.

We reached 114 million people nationwide and consumer interest in our product continues as search volumes grew +36% compared to the previous quarter.