Glow & Lovely: Purpose-driven Brand

The rebranding of Fair & Lovely (F&L), one of Hindustan Unilever Limited’s (HUL) flagship brands, to Glow & Lovely (G&L) in 2020 had hogged the limelight. HUL termed the rebranding as an important evolutionary step that moved away from the “regressive idea of beauty” and banished an undesirable social stereotype. Stakeholders had divergent opinions with the rebranding effort being termed from “path-breaking” to “too little”. Likewise, there was a divided house on the future sales of the repositioned brand. However, G&L, akin to its predecessor, maintained traction in the marketplace. The case provides an opportunity to understand the concepts of brand positioning and brand repositioning. It highlights how a corporate citizen can engage in responsible advertising and break an undesirable social stereotype. Attributes associated with fairness were identified to capture the extent of brand repositioning. Attributes associated with fairness were identified to capture the extent of brand repositioning. The primary data collected on such attributes was analysed with the help of Multi-Dimensional Scaling using alternating least-squares (ALSCAL) method. Discriminant analysis was used to understand which attributes differentiated various brands of fairness creams.