Course Relevance: Brand Management, Consumer Behavior
Academic Concepts:
The case is based on concepts such as brand equity, brand extension, perceived fit, consumer schema, category locking, emotional association, and parent-brand dilution. Colgate had very strong brand equity in oral care, but this strength became a limitation when the brand entered shaving cream. Consumers had mentally categorized Colgate as a toothpaste and dental care brand, while shaving cream belonged to a different emotional space of masculinity, grooming, style, and confidence.
Teaching Note:
This case helps students understand that strong brands cannot automatically extend into any category. Colgate’s failure was not mainly a product failure, but a perception failure. The case shows how consumers, not companies, decide what a brand stands for. It also allows discussion on whether Colgate should have used the Colgate master brand, Palmolive, or a new grooming brand to enter the shaving cream category.
Learning Objectives:
- Strong brand equity can become a strategic constraint.
- Brand extension requires both functional and emotional fit.
- Consumer perception can be more powerful than product quality.
- Poorly aligned extensions may risk parent-brand dilution.
- Brand architecture decisions are critical when entering unrelated categories.
Introduction
In marketing, an entirely owned category can represent the strongest brand position. Conversely, that position can become an unseen trap. Colgate’s story in India demonstrates this duality exceptionally.
Beginning in 1806, Colgate sold soaps and candles until 1873 when they added oral care. Interestingly, Colgate offered shaving cream in other markets first. However, when Colgate entered India, they remained Colgate Dental Cream.
Over the years, Colgate actually achieved something remarkable. Indian consumers stopped asking for toothpaste. Instead, they asked for Colgate. The phrase actually replaced the generic and as a result, Colgate disrupted a category.
However, fully owned category spaces create unintended mental barriers.
When Colgate decided to launch shaving cream in India, consumers couldn’t able to comprehend it. Colgate had been permanently mentally catalogued in the oral care, dental hygiene, and dentist recommendations brand. The shaving category resided in an entirely different mental space. This gap could in no way be bridged through marketing.
In India, Colgate’s category dominance resulted in the brand being mentally catalogued in the dental care drawer and ultimately Colgate became a victim of its own success.
Brand Trust and Category Affinity
The market for fast moving consumer good in India in the 1960s and 1970s was much different from the market today. Affinity to particular products was considerable, and consumers were more conservative. Each of the successful brands represented a product category in the psyche of the consumer. For example, beauty soap was represented by Lux, health soap by Lifebuoy, masculine product by Old Spice, and Ayurvedic cream by Vicco, among others. Specialized brands that represented a single product category in their market were trusted by consumers.
Within the market of that era, diversification of a brand portfolio to unrelated product categories caused considerable discomfort to consumers. Colgate’s attempt to entering the syrup category, for example, was perceived as an unnatural extension.
This exemplifies an important fact about brand building: in general, as brands develop and deepen their market dominance, their brand perception among consumers becomes more defined and often limited.
The Introduction of Colgate Shaving Cream
Colgate launched their Colgate Menthol based Lather Shave Cream in India in the early 1970’s. In 1972, Colgate’s product advertisements chose to highlight their product as a modern and invigorating solution to shaving in their advertisements. Colgate most likely relied on the product’s name to help the product gain instant acceptance.
Colgate’s shaving cream, however, had a very short market life and had a difficult time in the market. The product itself may not even have been the problem, as there is little evidence to suggest that the Colgate shaving cream was a subpar product. The failure of the product was largely based on the idea of perception. There was little to no psychological connection of Colgate in the consumers’ minds with shaving.
Colgate in India, meant oral hygiene, freshness, Dentists, family care, and toothbrushes. Shaving cream, however, was located in a different perception and emotional market and realm of shaving, style, sophistication, and grooming. The extension was perceived by consumers to be a question of credibility. The extension and product’s credibility had no apparent answer and therefore, created a lack of confidence.
Category Locking and Consumer Psychology
What marketing specialists term “category locking” or “cognitive fixation” stunted Colgate’s success the most. Customers had been mentally associating Colgate with the oral care category for many years, and once a brand is associated with a category in such a mentally singular manner, it is virtually impossible for them to break the category association.
The focus that Colgate made in the oral care category was in hindsight a problem for them, as the more trust and dominance Colgate build over the years in that category, the more inflexible the gap was for consumers to picture Colgate in a category outside oral care.
In case that consumers are rigid in their perception about a brand, changing consumers’ perception is expensive and is very likely to fail.
This was a problem that was evident in many Indian households. As consumers’ bathroom shelves were typically filled with Colgate’s oral care, Colgate’s shaving cream, and Colgate’s talcum powder, many customers were confused. While many people believed that it was logical that Colgate’s shaving cream could be used as Colgate’s toothpaste, the truth is that it was deeper problem with Colgate’s brand extension. Strong brands build customers’ trust and simplify the choices that customers make, while brand extensions that are poorly aligned create trust and simplify the choices will inevitably the choices that will brand confusion.
Emotional Mismatch in Different Categories
Another thing we noted was the emotional mismatch. Most successful shaving brands relied on male and aspirational/emotional imagery. These brands built associations of shaving products to one’s confidence, stylishness, sophistication, and self-grooming. Shaving and grooming products were built on these associations, with brands like Old Spice building successful brands on these associations and these imagery.
In comparison to these characteristics, Colgate’s brand identity in India was built around family care, hygiene, and trust, and came off as clinical and hygienic. While these associations fit the context of a dental care product like toothpaste, they lack the emotional depth to be associated with a shaving cream brand. Hence, Colgate was unable to emotionally relate and fulfill grooming aspirations.
This offers a fundamental lesson in branding.
In successful brand extensions, emotional fit and functional relevance are equally important.
In the context of Indian consumer, toothpaste and shaving cream product categories are largely unrelated in both functional and emotional traits.
Market Forces and Competition
By the time Colgate entered the shaving cream product category in India, the shaving cream category was already crowded and had established brands like Old Spice, Godrej shaving products, and Palmolive, all of whom had strong credibility in male grooming and in owning the product category in grooming and personal care.
Here, Colgate was a brand new player. Even in situations where the quality of a product is good, consumers tend to reject the product because of the brand positioning. This is one more practical example of what happens in marketing, where products are unsuccessful not because they are bad or of poor quality, but because consumers have rejected the brand story.
The extension presented strategic challenges for the company as well. Colgate’s toothpaste line was extremely valuable and highly trusted. A failed extension into shaving cream presented the risk of undermining credibility for the parent brand. Companies fear that an extension that lacks strength has the potential to erode trust in the company’s core category. It was very likely that Colgate-Palmolive understood that the risk of undermining credibility by extending into shaving products was much greater than the potential reward of extending the category.
Palmolive’s Same Category Success
Colgate’s shaving cream venture did not gain traction, but subsequently, Colgate had notable success with its Palmolive brand in the same category. By the 1980s, the brand resonated with Indian consumers courtesy of the “Palmolive Da Jawab Nai” ad campaign featuring cricket legend Kapil Dev after India won the 1983 Cricket World Cup.
In Colgate’s case, the brand had no significant ‘shaving’ associations, but Palmolive had soap and skincare associations. It was easier for consumers to buy the Palmolive shaving products. This speaks to the insight that it is not the category that is the issue, but the Colgate brand and shaving cream. Moreover, Palmolive had that emotional flexibility that Colgate did not.
Conclusion
The launch of Colgate shaving cream has been considered to be one of the best-known examples of failed brand extensions. The company greatly overestimated the brand equity of Colgate for other personal care products. It was clear that for Indian consumers, Colgate had a singular and fixed mental association that was oral care. When that kind of category association is established for a brand, it is really difficult to enter other categories.
In this example, consumers make brand evaluations that are not logical. Colgate stood for family-oriented, trustworthy, and fresh values. On the other end of the spectrum, shaving cream, stood for aspiration, grooming, and masculinity. The gap was simply too wide to be brought together.
Ultimately, the Colgate shaving cream case study presents an invaluable branding lesson: the brand “belongs” to the consumer, not the company.
In the mind of the Indian consumer, Colgate had already occupied one and only one space: toothpaste.
Questions
- Colgate’s failure in shaving cream is often explained as a failed brand extension. But was the real problem the extension itself, the parent-brand architecture, or the way Indian consumers cognitively categorized Colgate?
- Critically evaluate this using concepts of brand equity, category locking, consumer schema, perceived fit, emotional association, and risk of parent-brand dilution. Also assess whether Colgate could have succeeded through a different branding route such as sub-branding, endorsed branding, or launching under Palmolive from the beginning.
- Assume you are the marketing head of Colgate-Palmolive India in the early 1970s. You have strong brand equity in oral care but want to enter the male grooming category. What strategic route would you recommend and why?
- Your answer should compare at least three options: using Colgate as the master brand, using Palmolive as a separate brand, or creating a completely new male grooming brand. Evaluate each option on consumer trust transfer, category credibility, communication cost, competitive intensity, long-term portfolio logic, and risk to the core toothpaste franchise.
