Last weekend, my best friend, Yaya, asked me to join her in the University of Sydney alumni reception at Four Seasons Hotel. This reception was not only a gathering event for UniSyd alumni in Jakarta, but also a seminar about branding in relations with beauty products – which is my interest! I was so excited to attend this event and meet Dr. Jeanny Yip – the lecturer in marketing department at University of Sydney who presented her research at that event.
Dr Jeaney Yip started her presentation with a brief explanation on branding – the history of branding, as well as the definition and examples of branding. Then she continued to branding related to beauty. She said that what she presented in the event about branding and beauty products and beauty meaning was her preliminary research. Dr. Jeaney Yip explained, there are three concepts of beauty:
In this concept, beauty is related with nature. There are many beauty brands using this concept. This concept highlights the utilization of fruits, herbs and vegetables as the main ingredients in beauty products. In Australia, the leading brand applying this concept is Jurlique, while in Indonesia; we have Mustika Ratu, Citra and Martha Tilaar. The market of these natural beauty products – including organic ones, is growing significantly worldwide, with North America and Europe as the biggest market for these products (data from In-cosmetics website).
Beauty, according to this concept, is related to science. It means beauty products should be able to show the evidence, the rational of using a certain product, such as: fair your skin in 7 days; minimize skin pores, skin lines and get rid of acnes. Many brands using this concept in their promotion, including Pond’s, SKII miracle water, Clinique and L’Oreal. Interestingly, natural products currently are also adopting this concept since generally people will associate natural products with slow performance, and think that natural products are not able to do corrective performance. Then, it is very common now to see advertisement of beauty products promising of instant, quick results, showing laboratories tubes, etc to show its “science".
3.Socio-culturalisation of beauty
Here, beauty is related to socio-cultural values. Growing sales of whitening products in Asia is one example of socio-culturalisation of beauty. Looking back to women’s magazines in Indonesia in 1980s, beauty at that time was related to Hollywood, and yellowish skin tone. Then Japanese beauty was adopted – kawaii, cute and baby look beauty. Nowadays, we adore Korean beauty and no wonder that the sales of Korean beauty products increase dramatically. In fact, in Australia, whitening products are not popular – they adore tan skin. Therefore in Australia, whitening products are named as brightening/lightening products or luminescent products. Dr. Jeaney concerned on whitening products because they are strongly related to culture and history (colonialism).
Dr. Jeaney Yip concluded her
presentation by highlighting the fact that beauty has multi layered meanings –
I couldn’t agree more!
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