Stuffy nose, chest congestion or scratchy throat — no matter what dry, winter air brings, Indians are quick to dig into their medicinal armoury and unleash the good ol’ Vicks. As inhalers, cough drops or soothing balm, Vicks products have been a household staple.
Vicks was introduced in India in 1964 through a public limited company called Richardson Hindustan Limited.
Richardson Merrell had first established an office in India in 1951, but it was only after the institution of a public limited company in 1964, with more than 10,000 Indian shareholders, that the brand received operational freedom. Vicks today is owned by US companies Procter & Gamble and Helen of Troy Limited.
Like ‘Tiger Balm’ has been to Singapore, Vicks products have been to India. Simple, relieving and the most accessible item on the shelves.
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A family product from the onset
Lunsford Richardson, an American pharmacist from Selma, North Carolina, worked with his physician brother-in-law, Dr Joshua Vick, and began experimenting with recipes that could provide his son some relief from a bad bout of croup. Croup is an upper airway infection that children mostly suffer from, during which they experience coughing and congestion.
In 1880, Lunsford began working with Dr Vick and helped the latter with his pharmacy. Lunsford relied on his knowledge of Latin to learn the chemical compounds needed to become a pharmacist. That’s when he began to experiment with recipes for the product that would eventually become the Vicks VapoRub, a balm to alleviate symptoms of cough and cold. However, the product only took off from 1890 onwards.
In 1894, Lunsford moved to his wife’s hometown in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he patented about 21 medicines. The wide variety of pills and ointments included Vick’s Chill Tonic, Vick’s Turtle Oil Liniment, Vick’s Little Liver Pills, Little Laxative Pills, and more. While these products sold with varying degrees of success, the best seller was Vick’s Magic Croup Salve, which he introduced in 1894.
Reports said that he named the product after his brother-in-law because his name could not fit on the label.
The ingenious concoction of menthol, camphor, oil of eucalyptus, and several other oils, blended in a base of petroleum jelly releases soothing vapors when rubbed on the skin. And Lunsford’s son gradually recovered.
The VaporRub we are familiar with today was first sold as a Croup and Pneumonia Salve. In 1911, it was named VapoRub by the boy, Lunsford’s son, who inspired its creation.
“While there were alternatives, like Zandu Balm and Tiger Balm, my family stuck to Vicks religiously. My mother introduced this tradition of using Vicks whenever she caught even the smallest signs of a cold or cough and the entire family had to use it. She would apply it on our noses and throats. Even our steam inhalers were Vicks-ified,” Andrew (who goes by his first name), a student of Social Geographic Data Science, at University College, London, told ThePrint.
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‘Mother’s love’
But how did Vicks manage to rise in the Indian market, making way into people’s cabinets and bedside drawers? The answer lies in its strong and simple advertising campaigns that captured the functionality of its products.
The advertising for VaporRub associated itself with a mother’s love, someone who would tend to her ailing child by applying the balm on her/his forehead, chest and back. Be it the character ‘Sanju‘ who recovers instantly after a bad bout of cold or that son with a runny nose who runs to his mother after playing in the rain.
The brand carried forward the same sentiment in it’s 2017 campaign called ‘Touch of Care‘ that focussed on the transformative power of care. In tune with the times, the brand sought to expand the nuances of being a mother.
The ad focussed on the story of a young orphaned girl named Gayatri and her adopted transgender mother, Gauri Sawant. Based on a true story, the narrative shows how Gayatri takes inspiration from her mother’s acts of care and decides that when she grows up, she will be a lawyer and fight for her mother’s rights.
The campaign went viral, with five million views on YouTube, garnering applause from filmmakers like Karan Johar and being showcased in The New York Times and Women in the World Summit 2017.
Himanshu Tewary, senior director and category head, Personal Healthcare at Procter & Gamble, in an interview with Adgully remarked, “The Vicks #TouchOfCare campaign in 2017 came about by looking at the brand through the lens of a millennial consumer, understanding the values important to them and how they influence the world around them. Our insight for the Vicks #TouchOfCare series has always been rooted in the human truth that everyone deserves a touch of care. Each Vicks #TouchOfCare film is unique and tells a different story.”
Ashish Adpur, Creative Director at Dentsu Creative, told ThePrint “what makes a brand iconic is when they can hit the sweet spot between memorable positioning, synonymity with a category and, becoming an inseparable part of every household. I guess it’s time someone recognised that Vicks has managed to do all three. That’s when you know a brand’s hit legend mode.”
The second edition of the campaign, in 2018, brought to light the story of a girl named Nisha, who has Ichthyosis, a genetic skin condition, and who was abandoned by her biological parents at birth. The campaign aimed to change the stigma surrounding children with special needs by raising awareness on how we can make a difference in someone’s life by giving them a ‘#TouchOfCare’.
According to a marketing strategy analysis by Amit Banerji and Tarun Jain, Vicks Vaporub has a market share of 96.5 per cent (rounded off) among branded competitors in the vaporub segment. These numbers also reflect the attempts made by the brand to evolve with the times and extend the boundaries and definitions of caregiving.
Speaking to ThePrint, Dhruv Warrior, national creative director, FoxyMoron (Zoo Media) compared Vicks products to something as essential as salt in households.
“An indispensable product with many uses, and has found a home for itself in Indian households everywhere. How often have you heard the phrase ‘use Vicks’? Cough, cold, fever, body pain, blocked nose, headache…just use Vicks,” he said.
Other products
“Vicks ki goli lo, khich khich door karo” (have Vicks, get rid of scratchy throat) — this famous advertising jingle made Vicks cough drops an instant hit with people. And its iconic 1982 advertisement featuring actor-cum-comedian Jayant Kripalani and child actor Ishita Arun has an interesting origin story.
According to a report in Brand Equity, when marketing executives from Oglivy, Benson and Mather (OBM) got together to brainstorm on a possible campaign for Vicks cough drops, they wanted to bring an Indian touch to the worldwide ‘Ahem Bug’ campaign that began in Japan and was being adopted worldwide.
Piyush Pandey, an account executive; Jitender Sethi, account director; (late) Suresh Mullick, a national creative director; and (late) Pandit Vinod Sharma, a Hindi copywriter, got together and tried to build an ad to suit the Indian context.
Mullick and Sharma are said to have remarked, “Isko kya kahenge? Ahem bug to chalega nahi.” To this, Patel added, “Whenever we get irritated, ‘hum bolte hai khich khich ho gaya.”
Soon, everyone agreed, saying, “Haan, khich khich naam karo, khich khich.” And just like that, the tagline was chosen as a more suitable substitute in India for the ‘ahem ahem’ in US and other nations.
The famous ad won hearts across the country, especially for the on-screen dynamic of the actors.
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