SET WET DEO : A positioning fiasco

Set wet, very very sexy. One of the best Indian products of the past decade. Set wet hair gel , from the house of Paras pharma.
Starting with the first impression, the name. A brilliant name indeed. Apt, sensible, creative, good on lips and on ears. Its a gel which apparently sets your hair, but it is unique, it sets wet hair. SET WET, bravo! Ask any regular consumer to tell the name of a hair gel, Set wet can be the most common answer.
It was perhaps the first hair gel to effectively capitalize on the wet hair crenueau. They nailed it perfectly. Wet hair gives a sexy trig look. The ad campaign VERY VERY SEXY was beyond doubt smart. They understood the pulse of their segment.
Today SET WET is India's number one hair gel, dethroning Godrej Sara lee's Brylcream which itself enjoys a tremendous brand loyalty .
Now, comes the case is point. This brand Set wet was delightedly received by the customers, the positioning was entrenched, SET WET could have become synonymous to wet hair gel. BUT, Paras comes with SET WET deodorant, which I would not call that a judicious move. Come on, when i hear SET WET, i think of a gel, a wet hair setting gel, I can't relate this STRONG name with a deodorant.

Then, When a hair gel exploited sex appeal, it was first of its kind in India. But, when a deodorant does it, its absolutely an AXE "ME TOO" . Axe has been established as a chick magnet brand, remember the AXE EFFECT? You can no way take that position from AXE. They are playing on this domain since eons. Any attempt on this turf would have attracted "an axe wannabe" impression.
After trying really hard, they still couldn't beat AXE. Resorting to desperate measures they launch a spoof against the product. This was perhaps one of the stupidest spoofs I have seen. The ad made openly and bluntly a mockery of people using AXE. Why would you do something like that when you do not have a strong customer pool. Moreover, the ad did not expose any weakness in AXE's offering, neither did it presented well the benefits of using Set wet. Set wet had nothing unique to offer that it could lure the customers to leave Axe and adapt Set wet.
Then, one more brand felony. With the Very Very Sexy campaign, they played on the sex appeal turf. They attracted young ,sexy image conscious boys. Now, why would I embarrass my segment by making the same offering to kids? Remember the Very Very cool campaign? Kids moreover would never accept that they are kids, they wanna be big boys. And the bigboys they would die rather than using a product aimed at kids.
They later introduced Set wet Zatak. And Finally they dropped the Set wet from their deos and sell them only as Zatak.
They have now employed a different strategy for Zatak. It is cheaper as compared to AXE, and is indeed successful in accumulating quite a market share in Tier 2 and 3 cities, which houses the more price conscious segment.

By the way, Marico has recently acquired Paras Pharma's personal care business. It would be interesting to see how they modify the strategies for the brands.

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