Vicco's Traditional Healthcare Brand Strategy: Building an Ayurvedic Brand on Legacy, Legitimacy, and a Jingle

Industry & Competitive Context

India's oral care and skin care personal-care categories through the second half of the twentieth century were dominated by multinational players offering products positioned on functional, modern attributes such as foam, whitening, freshness, and fragrance. Vicco Turmeric entered a market dominated by conventional "snow" creams and was not immediately familiar to consumers, who were apprehensive that the turmeric cream might leave a yellow stain on their skin. In oral care, similarly, the market included branded toothpowders and toothpastes from established companies, against which Vicco positioned an Ayurvedic, herb-based alternative.

Vicco distinguished itself early by choosing not to compete on the same functional attributes as multinational entrants. Company materials describe Vicco Vajradanti as the world's first Ayurvedic toothpaste, formulated with 20 rare medicinal natural herbs, at a time when Indian companies were largely adopting foreign technology and formulations. This "swadeshi" (indigenous) framing was reinforced by the historical context of its founding: Vicco was launched in 1952, the year newly independent India held its first general elections, and the brand has been described as an expression of nationalist sentiment through an indigenously developed toothpowder made from Ayurvedic ingredients.

By the time competing Ayurvedic and herbal players such as Patanjali and established FMCG houses such as Dabur and Himalaya expanded aggressively into personal care in the 2000s and 2010s, Vicco was already positioned as a long-established, trusted incumbent in the Ayurvedic category. Notably, Vicco has not competed primarily on price. Reporting has noted that a 100-gram pack of Vicco Vajradanti toothpaste has been priced higher than comparable packs from Colgate, Patanjali, and Pepsodent, indicating that the brand's Ayurvedic-heritage positioning has supported a premium, rather than a value, price point within the category.

Brand Situation Prior to the Modernisation Campaigns (Pre-2019)

For decades, Vicco's marketing relied almost entirely on a single advertising asset. The jingle "Vicco Turmeric, Nahi Cosmetic" is considered among the most recognised jingles in Indian advertising history, reaching mass audiences via national television. The company adapted this jingle into local dialects and distributed it on video tapes, and also advertised heavily during cinema-hall interval breaks.

This reliance on a legacy jingle, rather than celebrity faces, was itself a distinctive strategic choice. Industry commentary has noted that while good advertisements build traction, celebrity endorsements typically help a brand reach younger audiences a lever Vicco largely did not use in its formative decades.

By the late 2010s, however, the brand recognised a generational gap in its customer base. Ahead of its 2019–20 campaign, Vicco ran a print campaign titled "Trusted Ayurveda" showcasing its full brand portfolio and redesigned Vajradanti's packaging. Brand leadership acknowledged the disconnect directly: Shrirang Tembherkar, brand and media manager at Vicco Labs, stated that while the company had a loyal customer base, it recognised a disconnect with millennial consumers, which the brand sought to address.

Strategic Objective

Vicco's stated objective heading into its 2019 relaunch was to preserve brand trust and legacy equity while making the brand relevant to a younger consumer cohort, without abandoning its core Ayurvedic positioning. Sanjeev Pendharkar, Director of Vicco, framed the task explicitly: Vicco Vajradanti had been a household name since 1952 with a large base of loyal users, and the marketing task was to appeal to millennials and make a "pure Ayurvedic paste" part of their daily regimen.

The agency mandate reinforced this dual objective of continuity and renewal. Triton Communications' Creative Head Jyotsna Parikh described the brief as centred on the idea that the jingle was the brand's biggest asset, and that the task was to "remix" it to make it young and modern rather than replace it.

Campaign Architecture & Execution

The regulatory dispute as a marketing asset (1978 onward)

A defining, and unusual, feature of Vicco's brand-building was the way a tax dispute with the Indian government became embedded directly into its core advertising. In 1978, the Central Excise department classified Vicco Vajradanti and Vicco Turmeric Cream as cosmetics rather than herbal/Ayurvedic remedies, which would have subjected the products to cosmetics taxation. Vicco contested this classification in court. The matter proceeded through multiple stages of litigation over subsequent decades, and the Supreme Court ultimately pronounced its final decision in 2007, ruling that Vicco's products, including Vicco Turmeric Cream, should be classified as Ayurvedic medicines and not cosmetics, and were therefore not liable for cosmetics tax.

Rather than treating this as a purely legal matter, Vicco converted the dispute's core claim into its advertising message. The jingle's central line, "Vicco Turmeric nahi cosmetic, Vicco Turmeric Ayurvedic cream," was created during the period of this dispute to reinforce the company's position that its products were Ayurvedic medicines rather than cosmetics, and functioned, in effect, as a public rebuttal directed at the tax authorities.

The 2019–2020 relaunch with Alia Bhatt

In January 2020 (with the ambassador appointment announced in January 2019 according to Vicco's own account, and campaign execution detailed in trade press through early 2020), Vicco engaged actor Alia Bhatt as brand ambassador for Vicco Vajradanti. The campaign, designed and executed by Triton Communications, centred on two core television commercials one musical, retaining the jingle, and one built around a dentist theme to communicate oral-hygiene messaging supported by a series of shorter fifteen-second films based on product variants.

The retained jingle was explicitly treated as the brand's core equity to be carried forward rather than discarded. The new ad film retained the original Vajradanti jingle while reducing the Ayurveda-heavy, problem-solution narrative style of earlier ads, and incorporated a popular star face and dance choreography aimed at building digital presence across platforms such as TikTok. A stated shift in the media strategy was the explicit insertion of digital formats into the media plan, with Bhatt featured across multiple short-format videos and digital content, even as television remained the leading medium.

The rationale for choosing Bhatt was articulated by both parties. Sanjeev Pendharkar stated that the objective was to appeal to millennials and encourage adoption of a "pure Ayurvedic paste" into their daily regimen, and that Alia Bhatt was seen as the right fit for this task. Alia Bhatt, in turn, stated that she had grown up watching Vicco's advertisements in theatres and that they were imprinted in her mind, and described the brand overhaul as a "huge responsibility" given the brand's legacy and market entrenchment.

Influencer and digital extension (2019–2020)

Alongside the celebrity-led relaunch, Vicco extended its turmeric cream brand into influencer-led digital content. The brand ran a "#NoFilter" challenge in association with Big FM, engaging online influencers and Bollywood personalities such as Soha Ali Khan to promote natural, makeup-free beauty in line with the turmeric cream's positioning.

The 2022 relaunch with Sourav Ganguly

In March 2022, Vicco extended its celebrity-association strategy to a second, distinct ambassador for its broader portfolio. Vicco appointed former Indian cricket captain and then-BCCI president Sourav Ganguly as brand ambassador, with campaigns planned across television, print, and digital media. As with the Alia Bhatt campaign, the explicit strategic intent was nostalgia-led recall activation rather than pure reach-building. The company stated the aim was to rekindle nostalgia among audiences who had grown up watching Ganguly's cricketing performances alongside Vicco's television commercials on the same screen. Shrirang Tembhekar, Head of Marketing at Vicco Laboratories, stated that Ganguly's persona naturally aligned with the brand's philosophy of being "strong and trusted," and that this would help leverage the brand across the categories it was targeting. Ganguly himself echoed the nostalgia framing publicly. He described the association as "a fan moment," noting that he often found himself singing Vicco's jingles.

Positioning & Consumer Insight

Vicco's positioning has consistently rested on a single differentiating claim: that its products are Ayurvedic medicinal formulations rooted in indigenous knowledge, not conventional chemical-based cosmetics or FMCG products. This is evident in the product development history itself Vicco Vajradanti was formulated using 18 Ayurvedic ingredients as an indigenous alternative to imported allopathic oral-care options in the immediate post-independence era and in how the brand addressed early consumer skepticism about the turmeric cream. Because the turmeric cream's natural yellow colour and sandalwood fragrance were unfamiliar to a market used to conventional creams, Vicco used direct-demonstration selling, sending salespeople to retailers with mirrors to apply the cream on the spot and dispel concerns about staining.

The consumer insight underlying the celebrity-led relaunches was that legacy recall (the jingle, the brand's decades-long presence) remained a strong latent asset among both older and younger consumers, but needed a contemporary face to convert nostalgia into active purchase consideration among a demographic that had not directly experienced the brand's original 1970s–1990s television campaigns. This is reflected in the deliberate choice to retain, rather than replace, the jingle in the 2019–20 campaign relaunch.

Media & Channel Strategy

Vicco's channel strategy has evolved in three broad, publicly documented phases:

1. Mass broadcast and cinema-hall era: Heavy use of national television and cinema-hall interval advertising, with the jingle adapted into regional dialects.

   
   

2. Print and packaging refresh (2019): A "Trusted Ayurveda" print campaign across the brand portfolio, alongside a mid-2019 packaging redesign for Vajradanti.

   
   

3. Digital and celebrity-led multi-channel push (2019–2022): Insertion of digital formats into the media mix, with short-format video content distributed alongside television as the lead medium; continued use of television, print, and digital media for the 2022 Ganguly campaign. Separately, the brand has used Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube for a mix of promotional, educational, and moment-marketing content aimed at younger audiences.

Business & Brand Outcomes

Vicco has not published campaign-specific sales or market-share results tied to the Alia Bhatt or Sourav Ganguly campaigns in any verified public source reviewed for this case. The following outcomes are documented at the company/group level, not attributable to any single campaign:

• Vicco Group's revenue was reported at approximately ₹500 crore as of 2020, consistent with figures reported elsewhere for later years.

• Under Gajanan Pendharkar's leadership from 1971, the company's turnover grew from approximately ₹1 lakh to ₹350 crore by 2015; group turnover was reported at approximately ₹500 crore in subsequent reporting.

• The company operates factories in Thane, Nagpur, and Goa, has more than 40 products in its portfolio, and exports to 45 countries.

• Vicco Laboratories has been accorded "Export House" status by the Government of India's Ministry of Commerce on account of its continuous export activity, and the company states it has received national and international awards in advertising, export, quality, and international trade. The company also states it has been recognised by The Economic Times as one of India's iconic brands.

• On the regulatory front, the Supreme Court's 2007 ruling in Vicco's favour legally affirmed the company's core marketing claim that its flagship products are Ayurvedic medicinal preparations rather than cosmetics, a judicial outcome the brand has continued to reference implicitly through its retained jingle.

Strategic Implications

Vicco's brand strategy offers several transferable lessons for legacy, heritage-driven brands operating in categories increasingly contested by both multinational and new-age indigenous competitors.

First, regulatory and legal narratives can be converted into durable brand equity. Vicco's approach to the 1978–2007 excise classification dispute encoding its legal defence directly into a jingle line rather than treating the litigation as a background compliance matter is a distinctive example of turning a defensive institutional battle into an offensive positioning statement that consumers could recall and repeat for decades.

Second, legacy communication assets can be renovated rather than replaced. Across both the 2019 Alia Bhatt campaign and, implicitly, the 2022 Ganguly campaign, Vicco's agency and leadership consistently treated the original jingle as the primary brand asset to be preserved, modernising its presentation (tempo, choreography, format) rather than discarding it for an entirely new creative platform. This reflects a conscious strategic bet that decades of accumulated mental availability outweighed the risk of appearing dated.

Third, celebrity endorsement was introduced deliberately and later than category norms, reflecting a considered trade-off between the brand's historically jingle-led, non-celebrity identity and the reach and youth-relevance benefits that a recognisable face could offer. The explicit rationale given by company leadership a "disconnect with millennials" indicates this shift was insight-led rather than reflexive imitation of category practice.

Fourth, heritage alone is an insufficient long-term strategy without periodic reinvestment in relevance. The gap between Vicco's peak mass-broadcast era and its 2019 relaunch suggests that even highly distinctive legacy assets require active reinvestment to remain salient across generational cohorts, rather than being assumed to sustain recall indefinitely.

Because Vicco is a privately held company that does not publish detailed financial or marketing-performance disclosures, this case is necessarily bounded by what has been stated in company communications and covered in trade and business press. Readers using this case for strategic analysis should treat the absence of quantified campaign outcomes as a limitation of available public data, not as an indication that such outcomes do not exist.

Discussion Questions

1. Vicco converted a regulatory dispute (the Central Excise Department's cosmetics classification, 1978–2007) into a core piece of brand communication. Under what conditions is it strategically sound for a brand to embed a legal or regulatory defence directly into consumer-facing messaging, and what are the risks of this approach if the underlying case had been decided differently?

   
   

2. Vicco's 2019 relaunch explicitly retained its original jingle rather than replacing it with a new creative platform, even while introducing a new brand ambassador. Evaluate this as a brand-equity management decision. When should a heritage brand preserve a legacy asset versus retire it in favour of newer creative territory?

   
   

3. Compare Vicco's decision to introduce celebrity endorsement only in 2019 (with Alia Bhatt) after nearly seven decades of jingle-led, largely non-celebrity advertising against category norms in Indian FMCG marketing. What strategic trade-offs does a "late entry" into celebrity endorsement present for a brand with strong pre-existing recall?

   
   

4. Vicco used two brand ambassadors within a three-year period (Alia Bhatt, 2019; Sourav Ganguly, 2022) with distinctly different audience appeals and personas. Assess the coherence of this approach from a brand architecture and consistency standpoint, using the publicly stated rationale for each appointment.

   
   

5. Given the absence of publicly disclosed sales, market-share, or brand-tracking data tied to Vicco's celebrity campaigns, what alternative, publicly observable indicators (e.g., export status, awards, continued group revenue growth) can reasonably be used to assess whether a legacy brand's repositioning strategy is succeeding, and what are the limitations of relying on such indicators?