Beauty brands set to offer the 5‑star experience

Beau­ty is set to become the new five-star feel-good des­ti­na­tion in 2016, promis­ing the best it’s ever deliv­ered of every­thing. It may sound like a marketer’s grand claim, but the evo­lu­tion may already have start­ed. After a dip in mar­ket growth in 2014, the focus shift­ed towards bespoke ser­vices, high-per­for­mance and new sci­ence skin­care solu­tions, as well as immer­sive online por­tals to re-engage beau­ty buy­ers. The cus­tomer isn’t just always right – she is queen.

“Ser­vice is the new lux­u­ry,” says Chris Good, pres­i­dent of the Estée Laud­er Com­pa­nies, UK and Ire­land. “In this age when the con­sumer can have what­ev­er she wants, when­ev­er she wants, how­ev­er she wants it, I believe that excep­tion­al ser­vice is going to become the most impor­tant dif­fer­en­tia­tor.”

Reaching out to consumers

Part of this ser­vice is nur­tur­ing direct com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the con­sumer via social media chan­nels, includ­ing Twit­ter, Insta­gram and YouTube. Char­lotte Tilbury pio­neered this strat­e­gy to great effect when her beau­ty range launched in 2013, say­ing at the time: “Basi­cal­ly we’re hand-hold­ing the cus­tomer through the whole process.” It gave Ms Tilbury’s brand a “heart beat” and earned a legion of devot­ed fans, but also start­ed a new kind of dia­logue between brands and their con­sumers.

When the con­sumer can have what­ev­er she wants, when­ev­er she wants, how­ev­er she wants it, excep­tion­al ser­vice is going to become the most impor­tant dif­fer­en­tia­tor

Crème de la Mer Renew­al Oil

It’s a con­ver­sa­tion brands need­ed to be a part of again after online beau­ty vlogs start­ed lead­ing, and in many ways con­trol­ling, the debate. It start­ed an evo­lu­tion in the way peo­ple were talk­ing about beau­ty and meant the dic­ta­to­r­i­al mes­sag­ing of “do this to achieve that” was rewrit­ten. How­ev­er, brands are now reclaim­ing the rela­tion­ship with their con­sumers to become a col­lab­o­ra­tive one and it is set to con­tin­ue in 2016.

A case in point is Crème de la Mer that tra­di­tion­al­ly offers a struc­tured skin­care regime, but in 2015 let 200 key influ­encers opine on the uses of their Renew­al Oil pre-launch, seed­ing it with noth­ing more than the instruc­tion, “Here’s the oil, tell us how you would use it”. The respons­es were many and var­ied reveal­ing the new launch to be a mul­ti-func­tion­al, high-per­for­mance addi­tion to the Crème de la Mer range.

Then there’s the cre­ative process of which the con­sumer is already being asked to be a part, as evi­denced by the launch of the Jo Loves Shot Can­dle, where the con­sumer decides the ingre­di­ent com­bi­na­tion in a semi-bespoke expe­ri­ence, mark­ing the first major devel­op­ment in home fra­grance can­dles since Jo pio­neered the gift of the scent­ed can­dle 21 years ago.

Estée Laud­er’s Estée Edit web­site, fea­tur­ing mod­el and YouTube star Irene Kim

The beauty evolution

Brands have already start­ed to change the beau­ty vocab­u­lary, with many eschew­ing “anti-age­ing” for “anti anti-age­ing”. Estée Lauder’s 2015 New Dimen­sion launch was described by glob­al brand pres­i­dent Jane Hertz­mark Hud­is as: “The next gen­er­a­tion… of where the whole indus­try is going… and we are going to lead that rev­o­lu­tion.” In this instance anti-age­ing was rein­vent­ed as “the pow­er of trans­for­ma­tion”. “We are going to cre­ate an entire­ly new beau­ty cat­e­go­ry. Make-up is all about trans­for­ma­tion, but why not skin­care too?” added Ms Hertz­mark Hud­is.

As well as inno­va­tion and lan­guage, there’s also the envi­ron­ment. In the same year that Estée Laud­er launched the Estée Edit, a “dig­i­tal flag­ship” that offers vis­i­tors a per­son­alised expe­ri­ence, L’Oréal Paris launched their Make­Up Genius app that serves as a L’Oréal counter and try-before-you-buy immer­sive expe­ri­ence via your smart­phone. Plans for the lat­ter to become an e‑commerce app in 2016 are in the works.

L’Oréal Make­up Genius app allows cus­tomers to exper­i­ment with dif­fer­ent looks using an image of their face

This also extends into the bricks-and-mor­tar flag­ship expe­ri­ence, which fol­lows in the foot­steps of the fash­ion mod­el of adding stand­alone stores to the brand’s offer­ing. While this has already start­ed to hap­pen – MAC’s flag­ship Pro store opened in Carn­a­by Street this month – 2016 will see more doors open­ing and “des­ti­na­tion beau­ty” appear­ing on high streets around the coun­try.

Innovation in beauty

A slow 2013–14, with growth of just 2.3 per cent, was also rein­vig­o­rat­ed thanks to sci­en­tif­ic inno­va­tion, which has kept the beau­ty and per­son­al care cat­e­go­ry in growth, reports Mintel. At a time when beau­ty brands are hav­ing to com­pete hard­er for con­sumer loy­al­ty, they are tempt­ing them with new ingre­di­ents and cus­tomis­able prod­ucts, the report says. And it’s a strat­e­gy that’s work­ing.

“Con­tin­u­al inno­va­tion in the beau­ty mar­kets is ensur­ing spend­ing in the cat­e­go­ry con­tin­ues to grow,” says Mintel’s senior beau­ty ana­lyst Char­lotte Lib­by. Inno­vat­ing isn’t only cru­cial for mar­ket growth, it’s also pos­si­ble in a way it hasn’t been before, espe­cial­ly in the cat­e­go­ry of gad­getry. Until now the dis­par­i­ty between the effi­ca­cy of at-home devices com­pared with in-salon or in-clin­ic treat­ments was vast. How­ev­er, with gad­gets, such as the Clin­ique Son­ic Sys­tem, ilu­mi­nage Skin Smooth­ing Laser and Philips relaunched Lumea Pre­ci­sion Plus hair removal device, that gap is clos­ing. In the case of ilu­mi­nage, their Skin Smooth­ing Laser uses “Cap Array tech­nol­o­gy, the same used by pro­fes­sion­als, mean­ing we have been able to bring clin­i­cal machines to the at-home mar­ket for the first time”, says Bobae Kim, clin­i­cal direc­tor of ilu­mi­nage

With the foun­da­tions laid in 2015, next year is marked as an excit­ing era of trans­for­ma­tion for the beau­ty mar­ket. The col­lab­o­ra­tive rela­tion­ship between brands and their con­sumers is putting an emo­tion­al con­nec­tion back into beau­ty.

Reaching out to consumers

The beauty evolution