When it comes to cosmetics in China, the proof is in the packaging.

Domestic Chinese companies are increasing their prices to compete with foreign brands, but are not upgrading their products -- just beautifying the packaging. The beauty business is booming in China's urban centers, where cosmetics are considered an affordable luxury item by both male and female white collar workers.

Luxury brands such as L'Oreal, Chanel, Clinique, and Shiseido have effectively billed themselves as passports to beauty for millions of young urbanites with money to spend and a taste for fashion. The market has traditionally been dominated by foreign brands. However, now Chinese companies are catching on to the power of packaging. Yutaka Matsui, executive vice president of Inoac Packaging, told Plastics News:

"One year ago a lot of Chinese companies came to my booth and said ‘We like the packaging but it is too expensive. (But now) they see the foreign brands selling for a lot more in China… (and) they want to sell for higher prices. One easy thing is more gorgeous packaging.”Continue reading...

Colgate Palmolive forecasts its global volume sales to increase between 4% and 7% in 2010. The household megabrand hopes to gain the loyalty of consumers in a number of rapidly developing nations such as Brazil, Russia, India, and China, this grouping of rising, populous contries known by the acronym BRIC.

"We're looking to grow faster in the emerging markets than we do in the developed markets ... the BRIC countries would be obvious areas of growth," said Ian Cook, the company's CEO.Continue reading...

After grabbing myself a slice at World-Famous Original Ray's Pizza, I wanted to find all the news that was fit to print, and was surprised by a New York Times piece on the sharp increase in brands suing each other over false claims.

So far, 2009 has seen 82 formal complaints over ad claims, according to The National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, on track to exceed last year’s record of 84 challenges, up almost 40% from four years ago.

While the "studies show" tactic of demonstrating one brand's superiority over competitors is an ad cliché, those ads typically have used "other leading brands" as their contrast. Now, increasingly ruthless competition has seen brands outright naming, and denouncing, competitors. These lawsuits include DirectTV's claim about Charter Communication's service. Or AT&T's complaint, after Verizon Wireless attacked their spotty coverage with their mocking tagline, "There's a map for that."Continue reading...

Next June, Paris will play host to a new beauty event called Make Up, in hopes of competing with the world's leading beauty fairs.  Organizers plan to turn it into "the unmissable beauty event" for international beauty professionals.

Make Up faces fierce competition from other beauty conventions such as Cosmoprof. Exclusively dedicated to the universe of make-up, Make Up was designed as a global platform for those in the cosmetics industry, with a convention that includes discovery workshops, conferences and debates, and contests where a relaxed sense of professional networking can take place.Continue reading...

Real men have touchably smooth skin! At least, the men who use the newly branded Vaseline for Men. The lotion claims to be for the face and body, and comes with an advertising campaign encouraging men to tone up their skin the way they do the rest of their bodies.

Which is great – but is it really going to have men buying lotion in droves?

Branding lotion specifically for men is a tough task, as Nivea proved last year. When they attempted to stock Nivea for men in the Men’s aisles of department stores, sales in the past year totaled a mere $210,000. No wonder Vaseline has chosen the unisex aisle.Continue reading...

Though the Avon Products brand has some challenges ahead, the chief Avon lady, CEO Andrea Jung, is singing a happy tune: despite sales declines in North America and China, the company’s third-quarter earnings beat estimates.

Avon came out on top by staying in tune with the makeup of the marketplace. It’s been focusing its appeal to the cash-strapped by promoting lower-priced products, and will be heavily targeting Latin America, where, the company says, people spend a high proportion of their income on beauty products.

Avon plans to lower its advertising budget, a strategy unlike the very expensive one undertaken by a well-known search-engine brand, but will hire more sales reps (while cutting 1,200 other jobs by 2013). It sounds like a plan that puts the focus on one-on-one customer interaction, which was what build the brand, rather than a broader blanketing of media messages. Reese Witherspoon remains the celebrity face of the brand.Continue reading...

As we saw last week, some cause-related marketing efforts go over better than others. Especially when it comes to breast cancer. Just turning out a product painted pink (we’ve all seen them) seems worse than uninspired: it seems like a mercenary gambit to profit off of others' suffering.

So it’s great to see products who manage to brand themselves to work with a cause, and do so in inventive and interesting ways. One that seems to be doing so effectively is Purple Lab lip gloss’s new Sealed With A Cure line, born out of a partnership with the Triple Negative Breast Cancer Foundation.Continue reading...

We all strive to put our "best face forward" on social networking sites. On Facebook, to add another cliché, the right profile picture is worth a thousand words. (Or, for the lucky, a thousand dates.)

This reality has inspired the latest branding initiative from Esteé Lauder:  “Your Beauty. Your Style. Your Profile.” The beauty company will be holding events across the country where ladies (and, I’m sure, men who want to look pretty) can meet with a professional makeup artist to design a makeover tailored to the website you’re aiming to join or have recently joined.

For instance, you could stick to a conservative color palette for LinkedIn, and then add a bit of pizzazz for OKCupid or Nerve.Continue reading...