It may not be fashionable to say so, but Nivea’s strength comes from playing in the mass-market, in the unremarkable, the quotidian, the one-size-fits-all. That’s not to say that any refreshing of Nivea Creme, one of its core consumer products for over 100 years, is turning away from the every-day, it’s about making it part of a wider and more diverse set of people’s routines.
Brands like Nivea Creme, owned by Beiersdorf AG, are in many ways the archetypal Ehrenberg Bass case study. In a 2019 strategic profile by Euromonitorof the Hamburg-based multinational company, Nivea’s mass-orientated brand...