Darketing : Saison 3, épisode 8

 

 

How marketing changed the way we look

 

Dans cet épisode, Mark Tungate analyse les stratégies marketing utilisées par les acteurs du marché des cosmétiques à travers l’importance des égéries, les campagnes Dove ou l’utilisation de Jude Law ou Georges Clooney dans leur version « non-photoshopée ». Il s’intéresse également aux différences de ce marché dans la zone asiatique.

 

<h2>Darketing S03E08 - « Branded Beauty : How Marketing Changed the Way We Look » </h2> <p>For me, the danger of blogs in <a href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3142/beauty.html" _cke_saved_href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3142/beauty.html">beauty</a> , just as in fashion, is that they fall into the same trap of being too much at the service of brands. I think that’s a problem for the consumers, certainly. It’s also a problem for the bloggers themselves; because how can they retain their credibility if they’re considered to be just another marketing media in a way? You have many websites, certainly in the United States, a couple in England, and some in Europe which are about people analyzing the ingredients of products and putting the information up online where you could consult them as a consumer. So you could be in, let’s say Sephora, (as we’ve gone down that route) - you could be in Sephora, you pick up a product by Clarins, or another brand, you look at ingredients, you go onto your mobile phone, you look on one of these sites, and it tells you how effective these ingredients are or not. So in other words, it enables you to almost bypass the advertising in the claims and find out what these creams really do. And that’s changing the game; not only for the consumer who is now more informed but also for the brands as well, because it’s kind of forcing them to be more honest. And that’s new I think. And that could be a future trend, you know, the kind of honest <a href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3142/beauty.html" _cke_saved_href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3142/beauty.html">beauty</a> brand that has an engagement with consumers and would say, “Look, this stuff really does what it says on the tin. We’re being honest with you because we know that you know when we’re not telling the truth.” That’s new I think. More and more brands have Facebook fan pages, of course, and Facebook has become almost the de rigeur place to talk with consumers. I think as in many sectors they’re hiring social media coordinators. They have a problem though because they never know which department to put them in. If you hire a social media coordinator, do you put him or her in the Public Relations department (the PR department), or do put them in the CRM department (customer relations’ management) because it kind of falls between the two ? So they have a problem but they are exploring that area. And also it’s important for them to engage with consumers because a lot of the time their products are being sold by third parties. So for example in France you have the importance of Sephora for example. So let’s say if you and me decide to launch a <a href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3142/beauty.html" _cke_saved_href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3142/beauty.html">beauty</a> product tomorrow, the chances are it would be sold by Sephora. They'll have all the data on who's buying this stuff. And we won't be able to, We don’t have direct contact with our customer, in fact. So by engaging our customer through social networks, we can actually talk to them in a way that we couldn’t before. Other brands have done things like launch mobile applications for example. There was a theory among one of my interviewees, actually from a very big skin care company, that the whole égérie, the whole <a href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3142/beauty.html" _cke_saved_href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3142/beauty.html">beauty</a> ambassador craze was going to die down one day. That people are fed up with things. Actresses who they could vaguely aspire to but knew they would never be like, and that perhaps you’d see more normal people creeping into advertising. But a couple of things stopped that. One thing that stopped it was the fact that the companies themselves like to have stars because it says something about the prestige of the company. Internally as well, she told me that the staff like it when they see a big name actress on the advertising posters because it makes them feel as if they work for a big, successful company. It also sends a message to the rest of the industry as well, “We’re a big, successful company so we can afford, you know, 'insert-name of famous actress.' ” So it’s that, that’s one aspect. The other thing is that if you take the famous Dove campaign, you know the “Dove Real Women” campaign, which did very well at first, sales spiked, but then they start to drop off again. The reason for that was although women liked the idea of the real <a href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3142/beauty.html" _cke_saved_href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3142/beauty.html">beauty</a> campaign, it appeared to them in a sort of an idealistic fashion. The fact was that the campaign is basically telling you, “Use our products and look exactly the same as you look today.” And in fact you don’t buy <a href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3142/beauty.html" _cke_saved_href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3142/beauty.html">beauty</a> products for that, you buy <a href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3142/beauty.html" _cke_saved_href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3142/beauty.html">beauty</a> products because you want to look better, because you want to change, because actually you’d rather look like Charlize Theron than the person who is staring at you in the mirror every morning. So actually, although ideologically you're perhaps drawn to the idea of “Real Women,” or for us “Real Men,” actually in your heart, you know, “I want to look like George Clooney.” I’d rather buy the cream that can make me look like George Clooney than look like plain old Mark Tungate every day. So I think it works like that, with all <a href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3142/beauty.html" _cke_saved_href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3142/beauty.html">beauty</a> products anyway, you’re also buying a dream. And it kind of takes the fun out of it if you’re buying a product that basically says, “Okay, that's it, you’re you, get used to it; and here's some soap by the way! ” You know, what’s the fun in that? When people did focus-groups and kind of looked at the sales, mainstream men weren't really that attracted to the idea of the metro-sexual. They almost found it kind of elusive, almost like women do when they look at these amazing actresses. They found it too far from their reality in fact. So you saw a sort a sort of backlash where the kind of stars that the male-oriented products use became much more traditionally masculine. You went from somebody who looks kind of quite boyish to somebody a bit older. That’s why people like George Clooney and Daniel Craig and Clive Owen work quite well as ambassadors for <a href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3142/beauty.html" _cke_saved_href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3142/beauty.html">beauty</a> products. Because they’re kind of a bit older, they’re sort of a bit craggier as well. They look like real men. Jude Law is an interesting example because if you look of what he’s doing now, he’s a bit older and actually they let him look a bit older as well you know. In a lot of ads for Dunhill he had very short hair; for Dior, he’s a mature man whereas we kind of associate Jude Law with having quite boyish looks a few years ago. Same with Leonardo DiCaprio by the way - it’s not a <a href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3142/beauty.html" _cke_saved_href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3142/beauty.html">beauty</a> product, but Leonardo DiCaprio did some ads for Tag Heuer watches about a year ago I think. And they deliberately didn’t Photoshop the picture, they left his emerging wrinkles in (some of them), because they wanted him to look mature, because younger men tend to aspire to more mature men. That’s what makes them, not dream so much, that’s what they want to be when they’re older, you know, it's almost like a father-figure type of thing. They tend to feel, that within advertising, if the men look their own age, they're in competition with them. So you’ll find a lot of ambassadors for products where the men are a bit older, because we aspire to being like them when we grow up. If you see what I mean. Well it’s not just <a href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3146/china.html" _cke_saved_href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3146/china.html">China</a> , many of these emerging markets are now just buying into the whole idea of skin care that the West has bought into for many, many years. There is a slight problem in some of the Asian markets in that the Western markets are obsessed with <a href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3144/anti-aging.html" _cke_saved_href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3144/anti-aging.html">anti-aging</a> skin care for example. One expert told me than it’s quite difficult in countries like <a href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3146/china.html" _cke_saved_href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3146/china.html">China</a> because aging is a sign of wisdom. So they’re not quite so into <a href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3144/anti-aging.html" _cke_saved_href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3144/anti-aging.html">anti-aging</a> products. What they are into however is skin lightening products because the globalization of the <a href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3142/beauty.html" _cke_saved_href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3142/beauty.html">beauty</a> industry meant that during the 19th and 20th centuries a very Western idea of <a href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3142/beauty.html" _cke_saved_href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3142/beauty.html">beauty</a> was propagated; basically, tall, thin, pale. The vestige of that still exists today, and that’s why skin lightening creams are very popular in places like India and <a href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3146/china.html" _cke_saved_href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3146/china.html">China</a> . There are others reasons too, historical reasons, but it’s mostly that. And those creams are doing very well and Western brands are exploiting that need. So they’re actually doing better than the <a href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3144/anti-aging.html" _cke_saved_href="http://video.iseg.fr/tag/3144/anti-aging.html">anti-aging</a> products in some of those markets. The potential for growth is huge in these economies, that’s for certain. </p>

 

 

L'émission, co-produite par l'ISEG Marketing & Communication School et Darkplanneur, est dédiée à l'actualité littéraire du Marketing et de l'Economie.

Le public de Darketing est double :

  • Le monde de l'entreprise (direction marketing, communication, commercial...)
  • Le monde étudiant (Ecoles de Commerce, d'Ingénieur, Universités, IUT...)

Darketing est réalisé par :

Les partenaires officiels de Darketing sont :

  • Strategies.fr (Groupe Reed Business), diffuseur de l'émission
  • Wat.tv (Groupe TF1), portail hébergeur de l'émission.

 

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