June 18, 2007
Drinkable Skin Care: Clear Waters?
By Faye Brookman, special to GMDC
Can a beverage make you beautiful?
Several marketers want to find out, and one of the newest beauty trends is teaming up what you ingest and how you look.
Beverages and skin care are being linked more and more in today’s health and wellness conscious world. Some of the trends are starting in the upscale market. For example, in France, category specialist Sephora will unveil a new, in-store beauty concept featuring nutritional supplements and drinks. If it works, the good-for-you products could roll into America, too. The Sephora department consists of a healthy and beauty bar stocking 10 brands of nutritional supplements and drinks. The lineup includes Fushi, Dr. Perricone and Dr. Murad, plus the house brand called 24H Slimming Program. Another leading line with drinks and topical products is Borba and it is also sold in upscale stores.
Coca-Cola and L’Oreal are working on a beverage to improve the skin called Lumae. Whole Foods has been merchandising beauty and supplements side by side for many years. Another new concept is Danone’s Essensis, vitamin-rich yogurt positioned as an oral beauty supplement. There is also a line of beverages from Borba.
Some of the new lines aren’t drinks, but beauty products using the heritage of beverages such as PepsiCo’s new Aquafina Advanced Hydration RX skincare line, which is set for an August debut on drug, food and discount store shelves. Aquafina, the top-selling national brand of water, licensed its name to Added Extras last year to introduce a line of lip exfoliators. Now there is a full line of 10 SKUs, including cleansers, toners, masks, moisturizers, under eye creams, wrinkle release and hydrating sprays. Prices range from $4.00 to $20.00.
The target audience is 25- to 45-year olds, especially those interested in health and fitness. The products can be used as a regimen or just as items for specific needs, such as cleansing and toning.
The growth of good-for-you beverages and foods could work well for mass merchandisers, especially food stores where consumers are accustomed to buying drinks. Some chains could even cross merchandise the beverages in cosmetics for multiple sales.
Discussion Questions: How do you handle these skin care beverage products in-store? Do products get merchandised in beauty, beverage or both? Do these types of items require a staff person to help sell them?
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A word of caution: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Sephora has a long history of how to convince customers their products work. I’m not so sure that will be an easy sell at Safeway. Can’t you see the Customer Service Departments jammed with shoppers demanding to know why they aren’t slimmer, fitter and more attractive? The key to selling beauty products of any kind is to have trained staff available. I’m just not sure many supermarkets will invest against that goal. Of course they could lease out space ala department stores, but then there is the question of consumer context–will shoppers want to buy certain products from conventional retailers?
I do believe these products will do well. They should be positioned with other beverages, just like Propel “The Fitness Drink.” I do not believe they will need any special personnel selling the product. Personally think that any liquid without caffeine will help keep you hydrated and thus keep your skin looking young, but it’s all in marketing. People will buy the perception and probably swear by the product(s).
With the right in-store literature, price points and displays, this concept could go big. In Japan, nutraceutical food and beverage are already a big business. And, introducing the skin-care-hydration connection is a logical one.
I don’t believe extra staff will be required to help introduce this item.
I do believe that it opens the door to a plethora of line extensions and products for aging boomers, who want to drink from the fountain of youth.
The beverage companies will follow the interests and trends of the consumer, and with the combination of baby boomers focused on anti aging combined with the increased focus on health around exercise and healthful eating habits, it is natural for beverage companies to tie into this opportunity.
Stores that provide consultation to shoppers will gain greater loyalty and sales; not only in nutritionals but in anti aging beauty products, lifestyle requirements, etc. and that supports in-store nutritionists as a valuable point of difference. Each store/chain will determine how and where to best position their health and wellness lifestyle assortments and the key will be how and where the shoppers expect to find these items in their marketplace.
Brand Equity is a highly overrated and highly misunderstood concept. Most people think Brand Loyalty = Brand Equity. If we define Brand Equity to be the extent to which a Brand can migrate its consumers from a core category to other categories, very few brands have it. Brand Loyalty, by contrast, is the degree to which consumers of a specific brand will make repeat purchases of the brand in that category. Equity – cross category, Loyalty – within category.
Under that definition, the odds of a Cosmetics or Water brand being able to migrate consumers from one category to the other is very slim because most brands don’t have true Brand Equity.
The key words in this intro are “if it works.” Does this mean, if the treatments work or does it mean, if the marketing works and we make money out of it? Frankly, the need I see for a professional is for a PR team to deal with complaints from people who pay up and don’t get the results they hoped for. Not to mention the television crews that decide to test the products and find out what, if anything, they actually do as opposed to what customers are told they will do (as recently happened in the UK). Sorry to sound grumpy but these products and the claims for them make me see red, especially as they probably will sell extremely well.
I’m with Bernice here. It feels like everyone is jumping on the lucrative health trend and it may be getting a bit too trendy for across-the-board authenticity. Ensuring that these newly introduced products are delivering on their promise is incredibly important…if not, we might be creating some jaded consumers.
I haven’t seen the research behind this new concept so all I have is gut instinct. From that instinct, I feel that women that are health-oriented tend to be well educated about the basics. We know that eating right and ensuring lots of water, food-driven antioxidants and exercise are part of our daily routine are key to good skin. If this product line can prove that it’s adding value beyond these natural basics, I’m all for it! But, they better produce…and be smart about how they message and what they indeed promise.
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A word of caution: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Sephora has a long history of how to convince customers their products work. I’m not so sure that will be an easy sell at Safeway. Can’t you see the Customer Service Departments jammed with shoppers demanding to know why they aren’t slimmer, fitter and more attractive? The key to selling beauty products of any kind is to have trained staff available. I’m just not sure many supermarkets will invest against that goal. Of course they could lease out space ala department stores, but then there is the question of consumer context–will shoppers want to buy certain products from conventional retailers?
I do believe these products will do well. They should be positioned with other beverages, just like Propel “The Fitness Drink.” I do not believe they will need any special personnel selling the product. Personally think that any liquid without caffeine will help keep you hydrated and thus keep your skin looking young, but it’s all in marketing. People will buy the perception and probably swear by the product(s).
With the right in-store literature, price points and displays, this concept could go big. In Japan, nutraceutical food and beverage are already a big business. And, introducing the skin-care-hydration connection is a logical one.
I don’t believe extra staff will be required to help introduce this item.
I do believe that it opens the door to a plethora of line extensions and products for aging boomers, who want to drink from the fountain of youth.
The beverage companies will follow the interests and trends of the consumer, and with the combination of baby boomers focused on anti aging combined with the increased focus on health around exercise and healthful eating habits, it is natural for beverage companies to tie into this opportunity.
Stores that provide consultation to shoppers will gain greater loyalty and sales; not only in nutritionals but in anti aging beauty products, lifestyle requirements, etc. and that supports in-store nutritionists as a valuable point of difference. Each store/chain will determine how and where to best position their health and wellness lifestyle assortments and the key will be how and where the shoppers expect to find these items in their marketplace.
Brand Equity is a highly overrated and highly misunderstood concept. Most people think Brand Loyalty = Brand Equity. If we define Brand Equity to be the extent to which a Brand can migrate its consumers from a core category to other categories, very few brands have it. Brand Loyalty, by contrast, is the degree to which consumers of a specific brand will make repeat purchases of the brand in that category. Equity – cross category, Loyalty – within category.
Under that definition, the odds of a Cosmetics or Water brand being able to migrate consumers from one category to the other is very slim because most brands don’t have true Brand Equity.
The key words in this intro are “if it works.” Does this mean, if the treatments work or does it mean, if the marketing works and we make money out of it? Frankly, the need I see for a professional is for a PR team to deal with complaints from people who pay up and don’t get the results they hoped for. Not to mention the television crews that decide to test the products and find out what, if anything, they actually do as opposed to what customers are told they will do (as recently happened in the UK). Sorry to sound grumpy but these products and the claims for them make me see red, especially as they probably will sell extremely well.
I’m with Bernice here. It feels like everyone is jumping on the lucrative health trend and it may be getting a bit too trendy for across-the-board authenticity. Ensuring that these newly introduced products are delivering on their promise is incredibly important…if not, we might be creating some jaded consumers.
I haven’t seen the research behind this new concept so all I have is gut instinct. From that instinct, I feel that women that are health-oriented tend to be well educated about the basics. We know that eating right and ensuring lots of water, food-driven antioxidants and exercise are part of our daily routine are key to good skin. If this product line can prove that it’s adding value beyond these natural basics, I’m all for it! But, they better produce…and be smart about how they message and what they indeed promise.