Behind plans to carve out a 5.5 per cent of the global market for personal care products, the company says it wants to develop its Nivea brand in all developing markets, especially central and eastern Europe, including Russia.
With both the Bulgarian and Romanian market remaining some way behind other Eastern European markets in terms of development, the potential for Beiersdorf to carve out significant niches remains high.
In order to capitalize on this situation the company says it will implement its Blue Walls promotion in the two markets. Blue Walls has already been successfully introduced in Austria and Germany as a means of introducing consumers to the cross-usage potential that exists amongst the entire Nivea subbrands.
With this in mind Blue Walls was launched on both Bulgaria and Romania as a means of communicating the power of what Beiersdorf claims to be the biggest personal care brand in the world.
To implement the promotion, Nivea chose the Core Granitul Hypermarket in Bucharest, Romania and the Hit Hypermarket Mladost, in Sofia, Bulgaria as the first retail points to play host to the branding activity.
These outlets were chosen because they fulfilled the necessary criteria of being amongst the largest mass market retailer outlets situated in each country's capital.
The concepts involved a stand that hosts all the Nivea products available in the respective markets, bringing consumers attention to all the different categories it represents and the significant variety of applications.
The stands are both approximately three metres high and five metres wide, providing what Beiersdorf claims to be both a holistic and emotional representation of the Nivea brand for consumers that involves free samples.
Beiersdorf says that the promotions have already drawn significant consumer and media attention and the company expects that it will help to give a significant boost to sales of Nivea products in both Bulgaria and Romania.
Indeed, with the Nivea brand already commanding a 13.7 per cent share of the personal care market in Romania, the company is expecting that figure to rise to 15.5 per cent as a result of the Blue Wall promotion.
In May the company announced that its global sales for the first three months grew by 6.2 per cent to reach €1.275m - a figure that was underscored by significant growth from its Nivea Beauté, Nivea Hair Care Styline and Nivea for Men ranges.
On the back of those results Thomas Quaas, executive board chairman, said that the company was looking to build on both its sales and EBIT margins during the course of the coming financial year.
As a result he has underlined three core topics that will be given special attention in the future, including increasing critical consumers, competing against an increasingly aggressive competition and the area of private labels.
These three areas are set to become a major part of the company's marketing and sales strategy up to 2010 and will be incorporated into goals to achieve ans increase of 5.6 per cent in total skin care and beauty sales as well as increasing the EBIT margin from 11.6 per cent to 15 per cent.