Looking Good

The amount of money spent on ads has a direct bearing on the success of the the company’s products. The annual survey of ad spenders done by A&M magazine shows that Hindustan Lever’s ad spend went up by 152.94 per cent to Rs 273.38 crore in 1996-97. This figure is more than the turnover of many mid-size companies.

Lever managed this partly because of the merger of Brook Bond Lipton India into it. But nevertheless, it managed to upstage ITC which was number one the year before. ITC was the only company to reduce its ad spent. While the growth was less the companies which spent in three figures were Videocon International and Colgate-Palmolive. Among the others, Shaw Wallace increased its ad spend by more than 84 per cent to Rs 58.60 crore. Dabur was another groupd which saw a 24 per cent rise in ad spend.