Lux Power of Glow Puts Anushka Sharma and Virat Kohli to Work

Inside the Strategy That Reconnects Lux to India's Celebrity-Soap Heritage

Lux has positioned its soap as the choice of film stars since its earliest advertising in India. According to Theprint In, Lux was launched in India in 1929, with 1941 marking its first Indian celebrity advertising execution, when Leela Chitnis became its first Indian brand ambassador. Early brand messaging established the proposition of Lux as the beauty soap of film stars, and over eight decades the brand has featured Madhubala, Hema Malini, Sridevi, Aishwarya Rai, Madhuri Dixit, Kareena Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, and Katrina Kaif among others, according to reporting by tring.co.in and socialsamosa.com. The Power of Glow campaign does not abandon this heritage — it modernises it by casting a contemporary power couple whose cultural prominence extends far beyond cinema.

The strategic rationale responds to a competitive Indian soap market where differentiation on functional benefit alone is insufficient. According to Indiancompanies In, Hindustan Unilever controlled approximately forty to fifty percent of India's soap market around 2021. Within that portfolio, Lux faced internal competition from Lifebuoy and Dove, as well as external pressure from Santoor, made by Wipro Consumer Care. According to Archive Adgully, Santoor held approximately fifteen point one percent of brand share in a 2021 compilation, while Lifebuoy held approximately seventeen point seven percent, placing Lux in a closely contested segment. By anchoring the Chand Sa Roshan Chehra platform to a modern, socially relevant standpoint — the private, affectionate world of Anushka Sharma and Virat Kohli — Wunderman Thompson South Asia constructed an emotional premium that functional soap advertising rarely achieves. The regional song adaptations deepen this by making the glow metaphor feel indigenous rather than imported.

Brendo and Gonfiantini Craft the Intimate World of Lux Power of Glow

The Power of Glow film is directed by Brendo and Gonfiantini, operating through Great Guns UK, with executive production handled by Manoj Shroff of Equinoxfilm in Mumbai. The production brings together a UK-based directing team with an Indian production infrastructure — a cross-border collaboration that reflects the scale of ambition Hindustan Unilever placed behind the campaign's relaunch intent.

Creatively, the film is designed as a glimpse into the private lives of Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma rather than a conventional product-demonstration format. Sagar Mahabaleshwarkar, Chief Creative Officer at Wunderman Thompson South Asia, stated in Adobo Magazine on 4 August 2021 that the idea was to bring the magic back to the brand by giving a sneak peek into celebrities' lives. This framing is strategically significant: it positions Lux not as a soap that celebrities endorse at arm's length but as a product embedded in their intimate domestic world. The glamour is not borrowed — it is shown as lived.

The Wunderman Thompson South Asia creative team behind the execution includes Chief Creative Officer Sagar Mahabaleshwarkar, VP and Senior Creative Director Anupam Basu, and Senior Creative Director Vijay Solanki, with art direction supported by Senior Consultant Manan Mistry. The campaign's regional executions required additional creative engineering: each language version is built around a different classic song, meaning the emotional rhythm of the film shifts with the soundtrack while the visual and narrative logic remain consistent. This is not simple dubbing — it is a cultural retranslation of the same emotional idea, designed to make the glow proposition feel native to Bengali, Kannada, and Tamil audiences across India.