BACKGROUND

Grooming is an essential part of life, for humans and animals alike. It is vital for
keeping healthy, clean and hygienic, as well as playing a key role in social
bonding. We all have our own grooming, or 'beauty' rituals. Whether that be
something as simple as washing every morning with soap, or undergoing more
specialist treatments such as Botox or chemical skin peels. In developed countries,
the average woman is thought to spend a massive $100,000 on beauty products
throughout her lifetime, while the average 30-year-old man spends around $100 a
month on grooming products and treatments. We clearly love the process of
making ourselves look beautiful, and it is this enjoyment that drives a rapidly
growing industry.

Promotion in beauty product industry:

Promotion is fundamentally a tool to spread the information about the products and
services available to them. However, promotional activities today not only include
advertising but it also consists of various promotional gimmicks such as dirigibles
at football games, on pack offers, coupons, sweepstakes and games. In the todays
competitive scenario, the goal of the organizations is brand awareness, product
loyalty and corporate image. Earlier the main goal of promotion used to be longer
product awareness. Cosmetics sector one of the fastest growing industries in India.

Cosmetics are mixtures of surfactants, oils and other ingredients. The cosmetics
industry in world is a multi-billion-dollar industry. Promotional activities are
important in changing consumer perception about a brand. New brands of
cosmetics to appeal to various population sectors are constantly being developed.
Cosmetic marketing and advertising is an activity intended to create customer
desire for a product or service. Such a desire is created not just through advertising
the product but also creating a favorable image of the company and product and
ensuring the experiences customers get from the company to support that image.

These results are achieved through well-conceived marketing campaigns.

Marketing campaigns can take varied forms such as networking, viral marketing,
relationship marketing, direct mail, online web or email marketing, brand building,
promotional marketing such as free giveaways and discounts, and trade show
participants, amongst numerous others.

PROBLEM

Modern educated and empowered women around the world seek aspirational
products than products that just accentuate their beauty. This is changing the way
the promotion of products is being made.

Cosmetic retailers design advertising to alter women's attitudes toward cosmetics,

encouraging them to buy more products. Many advertisers shape this attitude by
encouraging women to feel dissatisfied with their appearance.

Increased Cosmetic Use

In her book, "Can't Buy My Love," sociologist Jean Kilbourne analyzes nearly a
century of advertising. She argues that, as expenditures on cosmetic advertising
increase, so do women's cosmetic purchases. Because women feel pressure to meet
an idealized beauty standard, cosmetic advertisements that offer women the
opportunity to live up to that standard can be highly effective, encouraging more
cosmetic purchases.
Appearance Dissatisfaction

Cosmetic advertisements can make women feel unsatisfied with their appearance,
according to the YWCA. A 2002 study published in the "Journal of Social and
Clinical Psychology" found that women expressed more dissatisfaction with their
appearances after watching advertisements. This dissatisfaction can work to
advertisers' advantage when they're selling a product designed to make women
look better, so some cosmetic companies may cause women to feel insecure and
then offer their product as a solution to the insecurity.

Unrealistic Beauty Standards

Cosmetic advertisements frequently use retouched images to make models appear

more "perfect" than they are. In 2011, for example, a UK advertising watchdog
agency called the Advertising Standards Authority ruled that some makeup
advertisements were so heavily retouched that they constituted misleading
advertising. The rampant retouching of images in cosmetic advertisements can
cause women to develop unrealistic beauty standards that no one -- even models --
can actually live up to. This increasing fixation on beauty can encourage women to
buy even more cosmetic products.

Cosmetic Information
Ads for cosmetics don't typically present scientific information about their
products except to point to scientific studies that have "proven" the product's
benefits. However, cosmetic advertising can provide women with information
about available products. Kilbourne emphasizes that women are more likely to buy
products when they see an advertisement for the product, but ads also increase the
overall market for a class of products. For example, a woman who sees an
advertisement for mascara might not buy that particular brand of mascara, but
would still be more likely to buy mascara, according to Kilbourne.
Value growth was also driven by changing consumer perception, whereby most
cosmetics are increasingly considered as essential items for daily use, rather than
as luxury products for indulgence.

ILLUSTRATION

OLD VS MODERN
MAJOR ISSUES

Why is it that the companies are facing a difficulty to reach out to a large audience
with simple promotional material like they used to before?

How should companies modify their promotional strategies based on the nature of
their products?

All beauty products featured unrealistically good looking models which all started
looking the same to the consumer. What changes can be employed by major
companies while still highlighting the effectiveness of their products?

Growing from a smaller base, niche products witnessed the most dynamic value
and volume growth. In order to improve the marketing strategies, the organizations
have to study the consumer by understanding the following issues:

The psychology of how consumers make decision between different alternatives

(e.g., brands, products, and retailers)

The psychology of how the consumer is influenced by his or her environment

(e.g., culture, family, signs, media)

Lack in consumer knowledge or information processing abilities influence

marketing decisions and outcome;

How The behavior of consumers affect marketing decision while shopping or

making other decisions

The effect of consumer motivation and decision strategies while deciding

between two different products

How marketers make and improve the existing strategies in order to reach the
consumers effectively. Customer behavior study is based on consumer buying
behavior. The consumer plays three roles of user, payer and buyer. For
understanding consumer buying behavior marketer uses Relationship marketing. It
is considered as an influential asset. Relationship marketing helps in understanding
the true meaning of marketing as it consider the importance of the customers,
customer relationship management, customization; Consumer retention, one-to-one
marketing and personalization are also considered important by the marketer for
analyzing the consumer behavior.

The Cosmetic Business as a whole cannot have a same strategy as it is divided up

into several general areas:

Color Cosmetics or Make up,

Treatment or Skin Care,
Fragrance and
Health and Beauty Aids, or HBA ,a broad area that includes everything
from shampoo to foot products.

Solutions that can be used for a company as a whole are becoming more prominent
than that of brand specific solutions. So how do companies resolve these issues?
STRATEGIES ADOPTED TO RESOLVE THESE ISSUES, THEIR
EVALUATION AND KEY LEARNINGS

1) Breaking the stereotypes

Beauty Stereotypes:

The men and women who flock to stores, spas, and clinics seeking beauty
enhancements are often motivated by a society that places a high value on being
attractive. Being good-looking offers tremendous social advantages. Attractive
people are judged to be smarter, better lovers, more likely to marry, and earn more
money.

People have been conditioned over the years to believe that achieving a certain
level of success is only possible if you also attain a certain level of beauty and
physical attractiveness, says Lisa Amans, department chair of Advertising and
Fashion & Retail Management at The Art Institute of Washington, a branch of The
Art Institute of Atlanta. Since that surrounds so many of us, both men and women
easily fall into the trap of believing that if they are not beautiful they will not be
successful.

That vulnerability, creates the opportunity for the beauty product to step in with the
solution to the problem.

Many advertisers play on consumer insecurities in beauty advertising.

The advertisers work off the premise that all consumers believe they must achieve
the level of perfection shown by the models in the ads.
The beauty industry has had an influence on how people view attractiveness. But,
some say our perceptions have been clouded by the smoke and mirrors.

The advertising surrounds us to the point where we as consumers begin to lose the
distinction between the real view of beauty and the idealized image we have
created for ourselves.

How is the industry adopting to resolve this?

Over the past decade, society has undergone a series of unprecedented cultural
shifts. From increased minority and female representation in politics, to the
legalization of gay marriage; the increase of transgender voices in pop culture to
the rebirth of (fourth wave?) feminism the progress has been astounding.

Apart from the significant impact this transition has had on our broader culture, the
societal change has also held meaning for marketers and advertisers, especially in
the realms of beauty and fashion. Brands customers now expect more than just a
product: They want the brand from which theyre buying to reflect the culture in
which they live, the diverse people that surround them, and the causes they
support.

Perhaps no industry has been thrust into a cause-related culture more than the
beauty business. For beauty brands, their products, and the general measurement of
standards of beauty, customers are emphasizing the need for representation
across a number of categories. The good news? Brands are listening, and
embracing diversity has moved from a fringe trend to the norm.
DOVE #REALBEAUTY

Dove was on the natural beauty train long before many brands were even thinking
about it. For over ten years, the Unilever brand has pushed beauty boundaries.
From its first study that found only 2% of women surveyed found themselves to be
beautiful, to its award-winning Real Beauty Sketches advertisement, to its most
recent #MyBeautyMySay campaign, which encourages women to define beauty in
their own terms, Dove has pioneered a beauty movement for acceptance. Since
making that headway in 2004, many brands have found their own voice in
empowering women through marketing and have seen results from making this
natural shift.

It can be seen from the following image where the woman in the middle is a model
for Dove and many such everyday women are being termed as real beauties.
NIKE

Nike may not be a beauty brand, but as an athletic apparel company its been
taking great strides to promote the beauty of female athletes. Serena Williams is a
great example of a woman who, despite her talent and grace, has continued to
receive criticism over her beauty and her body in the media. In spite of these body-
shaming challenges (and there have been numerous accounts), Williams has stood
out for her class in the face of negativity and her ability to perpetuate the notion
of beauty through strength. As a Nike-sponsored athlete, the brand has given her,
as well as other models and athletes, a platform to transform the perception of a
singular kind of beauty and champion body-positivity.

Nike fostering body positivity movement to show realistic people.

Nike, the brand has also forayed into inclusivity of all body types in their
advertising and social media efforts, which seems to be paying off (as you can see
from those almost 78K likes and plethora of news coverage).

In addition to their above campaign, the brand also released a YouTube vlog series
targeted at diverse millennial women to reach them wherever they are in their
fitness journeys. This makes sense when according to Fortune, Nike sees its
womens business growing from $5.7B in annual sales to $11B in the next five
years. What better way to help perpetuate this growth than by showing women in
all their glory, shades of beauty, and strength?

Through continuing to create content that resonates with a diverse range of women,
Nike will also likely see a growth in women contributing their own authentic
stories through user-generated content. Earned content is one of the best ways that
a brand can see, in real time, what type of consumers theyre reaching, what they
love about a product, and what inspires them to share the brand message.

2) Shifting advertising strategy to focus on emotion over product

Let us consider the case of LOreal to explain how this trendsetter can serve as a
guideline to the aforementioned promotion strategy.

LOreal is shifting its ad strategy to focus on creating an emotional connection

with its consumers instead of highlighting its products as the beauty brand
promises to create an increasing amount of content-led advertising.

Speaking at Dmexco, LOreals CMO Europe, Blasco de Felice, said while the
brand has historically focused on its products in advertising messages, it is now
looking to create different types of communication.
We are traditionally a company that has been focused on product and we know
how to advertise great products, he said.

Emotions are there but less at the centre of that communication. What we are
doing now is trying to focus on new sorts of content that can trigger this type of
impact.

De Felice revealed that as part of this strategy the company has, in the past few
weeks, added US brand NYX Cosmetics to its portfolio, which includes Yves Saint
Laurent and Kiehls, to capitalise on its deep connection with the online audience.

This brand was built on very close relationships and very close emotion with
YouTubers and consumers. They generated over 2bn view which is impressive for
brand that makes $100m dollars of sales.

He added that LOreal is undergoing a major shift in where it invests its

marketing spend in an increasingly digital world, admitting that the change has
been a challenge company-wide.

De Felice also predicted that LOreals new makeup genius app, which uses facial
mapping technology to allow consumers to try on different products in real-time,
will hit 10m downloads.

3) Evolving marketing strategy through consumer insight

LOreal UK, whose wide portfolio includes the likes of LOreal Paris, La Roche
Posay, Essie, Maybelline and Urban Decay, is looking to better understand its
fashion and beauty consumers as part of a new strategy which involves looking
external to drive internal change, according to the company.

Hugh Pile, who joined the company as CMO nearly nine months ago, told
Marketing Week: We want to be inspired by the world out there, whether its
technologies, new consumer behaviours, trends and new partnerships, and then use
that to drive internal change to make sure were absolutely the forefront of where
we need to be as a business.

Pile says the company is bringing in data analysts in hopes of getting them to
become a strategic part of the business.

He also says LOreal is looking to partner with new technologies, including a

neuroscience company, which will allow the companys insights team to measure
the brains response to a piece of creative through electromagnetic pulse caps.

What this allows us to do is understand the essence to driving great creativity,

Pile says. That will ultimately be the thing that separates us from our
competition.

Increasing influencer partnerships

Pile says that the company has a wide range of consumers who each require a
different approach, something it is trying to target through partnerships such as its
tie with Helen Mirren for its LOreal Age Perfect brand, who Pile says reached all
consumers.

Its not about targeting ages, he says. You target what your brand stands for. As
long as you can tightly define your essence and the aspiration you share with your
consumer, I actually think age is but a number.
The company is also working with influencers such as vloggers and bloggers, who
add credibility to a brand and allow the company to identify and capitalise on
trends, according to Pile.

The more excitement you get from user-generated content, independent bloggers
and vloggers, it just drives engagement, consideration and ultimately purchase,
which exactly what were in the business for, he says, adding that the company is
also looking to partner with content providers, publishers and journalists in an
effort to feed the hunger for innovation and beauty on this constant 24/7 rotation.

Engaging consumers through digital and personalisation

In an effort to engage its wide-ranging consumers, Pile says the company will also
increase personalisation offers to consumers to create a dialogue and not a
monologue through a live chat in its customer care division.
This will also be through the likes of its upcoming Garnier Nutrisse campaign in
the second half of 2015 which Pile says will involve a hair colour advisory
service to help consumers engage with the brand.

In January, the company also launched its LOreal Paris Makeup Genius app,
which allows consumers to virtually apply makeup using augmented reality.

The moves are part of what Pile calls a more efficient and effective marketing
model moving from traditional channels to start embracing the way the
consumer moves.

Its not we need to start spending on digital, but how to digitise your existing
offering, because TV, outdoor and print are becoming more digital, he adds.

With new technology growth we can be even smarter with our advertising. With
things like programmatic and precision advertising, you can really identify people
that are right for a particular brand and still reach them at scale.

Spreading awareness to lesser-known brands

While the company will use its new strategy to continue to promote its popular
brands such as LOreal Paris and Maybelline, it is also readying campaigns to
drive awareness of some of its lesser-known products.

Later this year, it will launch a campaign in order to drive more people to try its La
Roche Posay skincare brand. It will also kick off a campaign for its Essie nail
polish line, which has low awareness according to Pile.
Its a loved brand, but our challenge is how do we explode engagement behind
it, he says. However, he adds that working in beauty is like pushing a rock down
a hill.

The reason I love working in beauty is our consumers are so passionate about this
category, Pile says.

Theres no effort behind this. Its an amazingly fertile territory if we can bring the
right creativity to it.

All of these solutions prove to show how cosmetic and beauty companies can
evolve and learn from each other to survive and flourish in a rapidly changing
consumer mindset.
ANNEXURES

1) How do beauty product ads affect consumer self esteem and purchasing?
(UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS JOURNALS)

A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research found that ads featuring beauty
products actually lower female consumers' self-esteem.

"One of the signature strengths of the advertising industry lies in its ability to
transform seemingly mundane objects into highly desirable products," write
authors Debra Trampe (University of Groningen, the Netherlands), Diederik A.
Stapel (Tilburg University), and Frans W. Siero (University of Groningen). In an
advertisement, a lipstick situated next to a stiletto heel represents glamour and a
teddy bear in an ad for fabric softener signals softness.

The authors conducted four experiments to examine the different meanings

consumers gleaned from products that were advertised versus not advertised. In
one study, the authors exposed female study participants to either a beauty-
enhancing product (eye shadow, perfume) or a problem-solving product (acne
concealer, deodorant).The product was either embedded in an advertisement (with
a shiny background and a fake brand name) or it was depicted against a neutral
white background. "After exposure to the advertised beauty-enhancing products
consumers were more likely to think about themselves than when they viewed the
same products outside of their advertisements."

What's more, those advertisements affected how consumers thought about

themselves. "After viewing an advertisement featuring an enhancing product
consumers evaluated themselves less positively than after seeing these products
when they appeared without the advertising context," the authors write. The same
effect did not show up when the items were problem-solving products.

Ads for beauty-enhancing products seem to make consumers feel that their current
attractiveness levels are different from what they would ideally be. "Consumers
seem to 'compare' themselves to the product images in advertisements, even though
the advertisement does not include a human model," the authors write.

"Exposure to beauty-enhancing products in advertisements lowered consumers'

self-evaluations, in much the same way as exposure to thin and attractive models in
advertisements has been found to lower self-evaluations," the authors conclude.

2) The nature of the advertisements of the past, which highlighted insecurities

3) The Negative Effects of Women's Advertisements

We live in an age inundated with advertising, from commercials on TV to posters

on the sides of buses. We see ads every time we open a magazine or call up a Web
page on the Internet. All that exposure has a significant effect, and the stakes are
often more than deciding whether or not to buy a certain product.

Excessive Thinness
According to Anorexia Nervosa & Related Eating Disorders, Inc., one out of every
four female college students engages in unhealthy means of controlling their
weight. This comes in no small part because of advertising and commercials
depicting excessively thin women.

Sexual Exploitation

Sexuality can be a powerful motivator, and many advertisements use sexually

explicit imagery to help sell their products. While sexiness in and of itself isn't
harmful, reports from Jean Kilbourne and other activists cite an alarming trend of
objectification and exploitation in advertising.

Ageism

Along with body weight issues, advertisements often depict very young and
impossibly beautiful women. According to the "New Yorker" and others,
advertisers covert young demographics since they often have more spending
money. That can result in ageism, particularly against women, who may perceive
images of unattainable youth as ideals to strive for.

Consequence-Free Fantasies

According to DiscoverYourDaughter.com, many ads present consequence-free

scenarios with beautiful people enjoying, say, junk food or video games. Such
images imply that one can live a healthy lifestyle by purchasing such products,
when in truth, the opposite is often true. When coupled with other images
presented to women -- thinness, youth and sexuality -- it creates a dangerous
impression that such a lifestyle is attainable, when in fact it can often result in low-
self esteem and damaging habits.