Settings

ⓕ font-size

  • -2
  • -1
  • 0
  • +1
  • +2

Same old story: why cosmetic labels use identical narratives

  • Facebook share button
  • Twitter share button
  • Kakao share button
  • Mail share button
  • Link share button
Storytelling strategies are an essential marketing tactic to attract consumers. gettyimagesbank
Storytelling strategies are an essential marketing tactic to attract consumers. gettyimagesbank

By Lee Gyu-lee

Meet Becky from Waikite Valley, New Zealand. She lives on a wild farm with "happy" deer. Her hands, chapped from endless farming, have been made soft and radiant through the "miraculous healing of deer milk."

This is the story of how healthcare and cosmetic brand New Origin discovered the key ingredient for its main skincare line DEEREST. The company promotes its strong purpose to embrace eco-friendly ingredients for its products. DEEREST, composed mainly of deer milk, is promoted for its skin-nurturing properties through its rich combination of deep moisture and proteins.

A "cosmetic chemist" inspired by people with soft, pure skin is one of the common elements many cosmetic labels use to endorse their products.

It's a story told often, repeatedly, in a much familiar format.

Founders or "cosmetic chemists" see certain groups of people of different vocations and are intrigued by their soft and pure skin tones. So they wonder how those people are able to have such perfect skin, digging into their secrets and finding a certain ingredient that gives them that ageless, flawless skin.

The key ingredients differ from company to company. For SK II, it is Pitera. For some marine cosmetics brands, it is algae extract or other aquatic products. Despite the differences among ingredients, they all have a common trait ― their main ingredients will give consumers pure, soft skin that defies age.

Premium Japanese cosmetics brand SK II used a similar story. A group of scientists from SK II spent years looking for a key ingredient for a younger-looking skin. Then one day, "by chance," they encountered sake brewers who had such soft and youthful hands despite their age. This led to the birth of its signature yeast-based skincare line Pitera, which goes by the slogan "miraculous ingredient for radiant and spotless skin."

Needless to say, stories behind a company's key ingredients can easily be found as part of an advertisement for its products, despite many of them sounding very similar.

Storytelling strategies are an essential marketing tactic to attract consumers and make them more familiar with a brand, and to have positive associations that potentially help develop brand loyalty.

The mixed fate of two homegrown cosmetics giants ― Amorepacific Group and LG Household and Health Care ― in the Chinese market vividly demonstrates the significance of storytelling.

LG has seen a surge in sales profits in China in the first half of this year with two of its labels having generated 30 percent to 40 percent of its profit surge, whereas the figure for Amorepacific is relatively smaller despite its huge spending on marketing.

"The reason why LG's brand Whoo has been a big hit in China is that LG deliberately used Korea's ancient royal culture and the story of an empress to create a high-end image for the brand," said Kim Ju-duk, dean of the College of Beauty and Living Industry at Sungshin Women's University.

Compared to LG, Amorepacific had no such effective story-based marketing and this led to their limited results there.

Multiple studies have also shown that storytelling marketing has a greater impact on consumers to better relate to the brand and are more likely to remember the facts longer.

A study from volume 20 of the Journal of Brand Management revealed that "consumers who were exposed to the story described the brand in much more positive terms and were willing to pay more for the product."

"There was a time when cosmetic companies compete to make up literary stories as marketing strategy… and that strategy still exists and is much valid," said Sohn Seong-min, a senior researcher at the Foundation of Korea Cosmetic Industry.

"Consumers are curious about components in the products they use on their skin. But rather than simply laying out the ingredients, the companies are attempting to deliver the information more familiarly to give more sense of authenticity of the brand."

Marine-themed skincare brand Lirikos publicizes that seeing "haenyeo," or female divers, using seaweed to refresh and moisturize their dried skin from salt water inspired them to use marine life in their products.

And beer shampoo brand Ashrolen explains why and how beer became a hair product as the first thing on the product description. The tale of witnessing beer brewery workers with soft and voluminous hair and smooth hands led to beer fermentation ingredients to be used as a shampoo.

Japanese brand expert Masato Hosoya said cosmetics companies use country- or region-specific stories to captivate potential consumers.

"Regarding SK II, I guess Asian consumers already know about Pitera, so the Japanese cosmetic label no longer needs to promote their brand with the story. But consumers in North America don't know about Pitera so SK II will want to use a marketing strategy different from what they used in the Asian market," he said.

In cosmetics, Hosoya said, storytelling is critical. "Cosmetics companies don't create the ingredients but they can create the beauty value that consumers want to be."?

Just as Hosoya explained, brands increasingly tend to put more emphasis on components and they do so by introducing organic and nature-friendly ingredients. However, finding and promoting ingredients doesn't always guarantee a brand's success, because consumers in general have no expert knowledge of ingredients.

So, experts say, cosmetic labels need to narrow the information gap between them and their consumers.

"Brands like SK II and New Origin focus on what they put in the products and the efficacy of those ingredients," said a marketer of a cosmetic brand, who requested her name and workplace not be named because she was not authorized to speak to the media.

"So they are using these stories to introduce rather unfamiliar ingredients in a more interesting manner. Moreover, by providing a detailed story, they attempt to sound genuine and build up credibility for the brand."

Cosmetics researcher Sohn pointed out that the urge to expose the historical development behind a product is an attempt to differentiate the product from others.

"One ingredient is used in multiple different products from various brands. So companies using this ingredient need to differentiate themselves to survive the competition. And the story is used here to present exclusivity of a product when compared with another using the same ingredient," Sohn said.

However, the irony comes to the stories to differentiate themselves from competing products that are becoming just as cliche. It is questionable whether consumers nowadays can better relate to the same old stories that they most likely have heard before.

Sohn added that the younger generation now lives in a society with vast information, thus they tend to avoid receiving too much information. "The current trend is to make an impact with the strongest marketing point and to let consumers choose what information they want to take by creating a separate platforms with options."

As effectiveness in strategy continues to shift along with the trend, the tales of adventurous journeys and fortuitous encounters of finding a miraculous efficacy of a product seem increasingly unnecessary.


Lee Gyu-lee gyulee@koreatimes.co.kr


X
CLOSE

Top 10 Stories

go top LETTER