In the fast paced environment of today where things change literally every second, if there’s one thing that stops many females from making strides in their respective fields and walks of life, it is menstrual pain, something that women face each month.
According to a survey conducted by the European Research Journal which involved 19 Indian gynecologists, 81 to 93% women were found to be experiencing severe menstrual pain- including severe spasms and discomfort during their periods, and a whopping 63% young women experiencing social withdrawal due to period pain.
In fact, in one of India’s largest known period health studies, it was also found out that 70% of Indian women face menstrual health issues.
Recognising this need gap in the society and the urgency to have an ‘almost’ instant fix-it to the same, one of the leading pain relief brands from the house of Bayer’s Consumer Health- Saridon has now forayed into a new category- period pain solution with the launch of ‘Saridon Woman’.
Known to be a first-of-its-kind category innovation to provide holistic relief from abdominal cramps, backache, headache every month, Saridon Woman offers a unique solution for menstrual discomfort by combining the efficacy of Paracetamol with plant-based molecule Hyoscine Butylbromide to provide both- a fast and long lasting relief to females during their menstrual cycles.
Speaking exclusively to Marketing Mind about the same, Ritu Mittal, Head- Marketing and Digital, Bayer Consumer Health Division India, highlighted that the formulation of Bayer’s new breakthrough innovation in the OTC sector is recommended by well-known global gynecologists’ association Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.
“Being one of the key brands under Bayer Consumer Health, Saridon is already a market leader in the headache space with a very strong equity in pain relief from headache. When we looked at how we could serve more consumers by extending the brand to bigger market spaces and demand spaces to make the consumers’ lives better, we connected with consumers to identify their pain points and identified menstrual pain as a key segment that we could address and solve innovatively, and so we came up with our newest offering- Saridon Woman,” she said.
Finding out the problem and the demand for effective solutions to address the problem of menstrual abdominal cramps, backache and headache, the brand, as per Mittal, also identified that women today are definitely looking for solutions, but at the same time, they have a lot of concerns and questions in mind around potential side effects and safety, thereby not being able to appropriate solutions.
“During our research, we identified that there is a potential to talk more openly about appropriate and real solutions that can alleviate menstrual pains in females, so that they can continue with life as usual even in those days and help them continue conquering what they want to conquer. And while there are several traditional remedies that females use when they are on their periods like using hot water bags for temporary relief, we realised that it is no longer sufficient and females need a solution which gives them quicker and more lasting and assured relief,” she added.
For a base brand like Saridon which leverages a 50-years-long legacy, there comes an automatic associated trust and brand love and so when the proposition of Saridon Woman came up, Mittal emphasised that the brand received a heartening response from every female who came to know about it.
Talking about the target audience of the newly launched brand and the correlation of the same with the base or master brand, she mentioned that while Saridon targets a wider audience due to headache being an almost 100% incidence across consumer diaspora, Saridon Woman specifically targets women in the age group of 18-45 years which makes every one in two consumers, its target audience.
“Our TG for Saridon Women comprises females from all walks of life ranging from working professionals, to students, homemakers, and more, who need fast and effective relief from menstrual pain. That being said, Saridon Woman, in a way, is also a subset of Saridon because multiple studies point out that almost 50% women suffer from menstrual cycle-induced headaches in addition to abdominal cramps and backache,” she said.
Upon being questioned on the multiple nuances that the brand has taken into consideration when planning the marketing mix and communication of the newly launched Saridon Woman, Bayer’s Mittal replied, “When we connected with our consumers ahead of crafting our launch campaign, we identified that safety is the foremost concern and so it became very important for us to address it first up. And while there are multiple ways to do so, what we’ve done is that we’ve focussed on giving greater clarity on the formulation so that the consumers who are increasingly becoming more aware know what the product has, lending a certain sense of assurance to the end consumer.”
On a broader level, she also mentioned that while the brand is addressing the long-term safety aspects of the product, safety is a very broad term and as the team dug deeper into it, it was found out that the consumers were more concerned with long-term safety.
“This long term safety is something that we have tried to assure and not just through the mainline conversation but also through a lot of conversation that we do on social media platforms. We’ve specifically roped in gynecologists as our partners on this to drive more education and bust myths that exist around this, both- in clinics and on social media, as concerns on safety cannot be addressed in a single communication or in one go and take time,” she emphasised.
Delving further into the mix of channels that the brand is leveraging for its communications, given the fact that Saridon Woman has been launched in nine top priorities markets of the brand, Mittal stated, “For us, it is very important that we are able to target our consumers in a sharp way and digital really helps in that. So, in terms of the marketing mix, we are currently using multiple digital touch points- including video viewing platforms like YouTube and OTTs, to social media across Facebook and Instagram, Influencers through Reels or Short Video Content, traditional mediums like Television and Print and more.”
Giving a bit of a prelude to how Saridon Woman adds up to the overall scheme of things at Bayer Consumer Health, Mittal stated that she strongly believes that the newly launched brand will help in strengthening Saridon’s equity as a pain relief brand further and help the base brand expand from headache into more spaces, establishing it as not just a headache but a holistic pain relief brand, whilst accelerating the brand’s growth multifold.
“At Bayer Consumer Health India, our overall mission is to get into 100 million households and the launch of Saridon Woman is definitely a step forward in that mission because this category innovation will help us in extending Saridon’s equity and helps fulfill our purpose of bringing to life our vision of good health and no pain for all,” she said.
At the time of its launch, Saridon Woman, unlike many other brands who resorted to onboarding a celebrity brand ambassador and lending his/her face to the offering for greater awareness, didn’t use a celebrity and the reason behind the same, as explained by Mittal, was that there are certain times when celebrities can play a very important role in driving brand awareness, but at the same time, there’ll be instances and categories where the brand may need a more next-door-kind face to bring its communication or messaging to life in order to strike more authentic connections with the audience and leading to a more authentic, relatable and memorable consumer experience.
Hence, for the launch campaign of Saridon Woman, Bayer collaborated with Mullen Lowe Lintas Group to come up with ‘No Pain, Period’ brand film, which presents a relatable and engaging narrative between two sisters.
The video begins with a young woman being determined to attend a critical job interview despite being hampered by painful menstrual cramps and her sister suggesting her to take rest or ‘aaram’. But the young woman, unable to afford any downtime, dismisses the idea. Upon hearing which, the sister then clarifies with “I meant dard se aaram” and introduced her to Saridon Woman as the solution to her period woes.
The campaign then demonstrates how Saridon Woman’s plant-based formulation starts working in just five minutes, offering long-lasting relief from monthly pain and associated discomforts.
On a slightly forward looking note, she also pointed out that the brand is also willing to explore multiple partnerships, including that with Women’s Cricket (WPL), where it sees potential synergies in terms of the target audience and conversations that it wants to strike.
Additionally, Mittal also mentioned that while driving awareness is the key objective for Saridon Woman, it is unaided or spontaneous awareness that is a bigger priority for Mittal currently, versus only top of mind recall as the latter is an outcome of the same.
Candidly, she also elaborated that building a strong top of mind recall is a must for brands which operate in a more impulse purchase driven category, but for a category like menstrual pain relief medicine, unaided or spontaneous awareness is more critical for it is a recurring category.
