Category: Data-Labor-Technology Stories

Today’s beauty brands have a new audience to win over when debuting their products: the ever-growing group of skin-care and makeup junkies that is burgeoning online. But with that has come increased competition, as these customers are surfing through social platforms crowded by other brands and influencers, all hoping to entice the same group of customers.

To solve for this, companies have started focusing on what’s trending online from the get-go, altering both their product formulations and outside packaging to better catch the scrolling eye.

The result is an uptick in products that emphasize texture, viscosity, light and color, often with special effects like glitter or foam added in. Products with unique application processes, like those utilizing water droppers and sponges, and all manner of masks, are also popular.

“This is a huge trend — we talk about it every single day,” said Rinat Aruh, the co-founder and CEO of Aruliden, a branding and product design consultancy that works with brands including Maybelline and Kiehl’s. Now, these brands are spending thousands more on product development, she said, thanks to a longer list of requirements for success.

Farsali’s gold-infused Rose Gold Elixir

And, although brand aesthetics may differ, no one brand in the category seems immune to the tactic.

K-beauty stalwarts like Glow Recipe and internet-born brands like Farsali have led the charge, but many others have followed suit, including the more traditional, artistry-driven brands like MAC Cosmetics and Too Faced, and the more minimalist, newer entrants like Glossier and Drunk Elephant. Even mass brands like Maybelline and Covergirl are taking part.

“There’s a big desire today to create something that results in an Instagram moment, where a product is very photogenic and encourages consumers to take a picture of it,” said Natasha Jen, a partner at the branding agency Pentagram, which counts Dr.Jart+ and Oliveda as clients. “Those moments lead to word of mouth and are huge advertising opportunities.”

A light-reflecting highlighter from Anastasia Beverly Hills

Indeed, given social media’s impact on consumer purchases, this phenomenon is not surprising. In 2016, a Facebook IQ report found that 53 percent of beauty purchases are influenced by what beauty experts share on social media, while 44 percent of them are influenced by what brands post on these platforms.

Setting the scene
That beauty brands care about the way their packaging looks isn’t new, but today, they’re approaching it from a different angle.

“We used to use the lens of: How do we design to create an impact on shelves?” said Aruh. “But now, we design for the thumbnail, which really changes some of the choices we make.”

Where once tactility might be essential to a product’s outer packaging, for instance, light and color now take its place. Shiny glass and plastics, colors that pop and all manner of sparkle are common.

Palettes decorated in metallics or graphic patterns — which also allow shoppers to capture various textures and colors in one snap — have also seen success, with brands including Tarte Cosmetics and Gigi Hadid for Maybelline putting their spin on the format.

When Glow Recipe founders Sarah Lee and Christine Chang chose the glass container for their brand’s Watermelon Glow Sleep Mask, its resemblance to ice was intentional, they said.

In planning the product’s debut last May with Sephora, its launch partner, the multi-retailer had specifically requested it involve “social media–worthy packaging,” said Lee.

Glow Recipe’s Watermelon Glow Sleeping Mask

As K-beauty practitioners, they’re used to the idea. The skin-care category is known for brands like Tonymoly, Too Cool for School and Ultru, all of which incorporate packaging that’s louder and more fun than its American counterparts.

“It’s such a saturated market, and packaging designs today are so beautiful,” said Lee. “Everything is screaming for attention and you definitely need a point of difference.”

Even product mailers are being transformed in the hopes of garnering online attention.

In 2017, the subscription service Birchbox — already known at the time for its rotation of patterned beauty boxes — redesigned their shippers to a shade of salmon-pink, with positive affirmations like “Yes!” sprinkled across them. Each shopper’s name on the mailers is now also preceded by adjectives like “The Tenacious….” or “The Clever….,” to add personalization to the overall effect. It increased not just social mentions, but brand loyalty, too, said Fran Gaitanaros, the company’s vp of creative.

Bringing the inside out
It’s not just the outside packaging that counts. Glow Recipe’s Watermelon Glow Sleep Mask may not have performed as well (it sold out seven times) if the actual product wasn’t a pretty pink, gel-like substance.

“Korean beauty is uniquely suited to Instagram because the textures are unique and the experience is very sensorial,” said Chang. Whenever the brand posts images or video clips of the watermelon mask online, she said, followers go nuts and like the posts more than any others.

Korean beauty sheet masks sold on GlowRecipe.com

And the idea has spread beyond K-beauty.

Glossier has played up the texture of its products, including its thick Cloudpaint blushes and its sticky Haloscope highlighter. MAC Cosmetics and Too Faced have popularized the “baked” product look, championing bronzers and eyeshadow palettes that evoke tightly-packed, shimmery sand. Others, like Farsali and Dr. Jart+, have emphasized the liquidity of their products using water droppers, mists and sheet masks.

“These unique approaches to beauty have really been able to thrive visually and have helped to bring skin care out from behind closed bathroom doors, so that it’s now a social sharing moment,” said Chang.

While branding and product consultants like Aruh and Jen once only focused on the packaging aspect of a product, they’re collaborating on the actual formulations more and more.

“It’s less about the chemistry behind it and more about the so-called ‘goop,’” said Aruh. “We’re helping to bring the inside out and make the overall brand story [more tangible].”

Assorted Glossier products

The efficacy question
But not everyone is convinced this emphasis on social media appeal is really serving the consumer, as the ingredients that create buzz aren’t always good for skin, and the “effects” seen in a well-crafted photo or video aren’t necessarily easy to replicate (or truly important, for that matter).

“I think we’re losing sight of what is actually good for consumers, product-wise,” said Jen. “There’s a strange shift in priorities happening where things are very surface-driven, even for beauty.”

Lee and Chang agreed, noting that they’ve made a point not to include things like parabens, synthetic dyes and phthalates that are often responsible for some of these Insta-worthy effects — but they’re an exception.

“There are a lot of Instagram-popular beauty products that have catchy hooks and can be visually satisfying to watch, but that doesn’t always mean they deliver results,” said Lee.

The post Instagram appeal: How social media is changing product development in beauty appeared first on Digiday.

NBC Sports plans to air original episodes of BuzzFeed’s “Worth It” and Complex Networks’ “Hot Ones” on TV, as part of the company’s broad video game plan leading into the Super Bowl.

For NBC’s Super Bowl coverage — the game will air on NBC’s broadcast network on Feb. 4 — NBC Sports commissioned new episodes of “Hot Ones,” a video interview series from Complex Networks’ First We Feast food site, and “Worth It,” a food and travel show from BuzzFeed. In “Hot Ones,” host Sean Evans interviews celebrities while they eat 10 increasingly spicy chicken wings. “Worth It” follows hosts Steven Lim and Andrew Ilnyckyj as they travel to different cities and try local food at different prices.

For the Super Bowl, NBC Sports commissioned a “Hot Ones” episode with Von Miller, Denver Broncos linebacker and former Super Bowl MVP, as the guest. The episode of “Worth It” will feature different eating spots in Minneapolis, where the game will occur.

As part of NBC Sports’ deal with Complex Networks and BuzzFeed, both episodes of “Hot Ones” and “Worth It” will also be available on YouTube and other platforms.

NBC Sports has worked with other publishers before to make original social content for major sporting events. In addition to broadcasting the Super Bowl every three years, NBC Sports also has the U.S. rights to the Olympics. During the last Summer Olympics, NBC Sports recruited 12 BuzzFeed producers to program a daily Olympics channel for Snapchat Discover — which NBC Sports and BuzzFeed plan to do again for the coming Winter Olympics. Similarly, NBC Sports also used BuzzFeed’s Tasty for digital and social videos for last year’s Kentucky Derby.

NBC Sports parent NBCUniversal is a BuzzFeed investor, which has opened up all sorts of content partnership opportunities between the two companies over the past year.

But NBC Sports has also worked with publishers and video creators that it does not have a stake in, including Complex Networks this year, and Whistle Sports and Dude Perfect the last time it aired the game in 2015.

“Across both the Super Bowl and the Olympics, we’ve done a great job of aggregating audiences on social, on our website and on TV,” said Lyndsay Signor, senior director of consumer engagement at NBC Sports Group. “But because these events are so huge, it’s been part of our strategy to go outside of our own footprint and work with partners [such as BuzzFeed and Complex Networks], who can help us reach people who aren’t necessarily football fans.”

Beyond these content partnerships, NBC Sports will have 25 people from its social, digital and marketing teams creating, editing and distributing video for NBC’s sites, apps and social pages, Signor said.

Ten of those staffers will be in Minnesota throughout the week shooting video features and interviews. The rest will be based in NBC Sports’ broadcast center in Stamford, Connecticut. Planned segments for the week include a feature on the Juicy Lucy burger (a Minnesota staple), interviews with ice-fishing shack owners and interviews with athletes on roller coasters inside the Mall of America. Some of these segments might also make it on the air on Super Bowl Sunday, Signor said.

NBC Sports has also embedded a social team member in the on-air production team this week to produce additional athlete interviews and segments with NBC Sports on-air talent, including Al Michaels, Cris Collinsworth and Michele Tafoya. Planned segments here include a “Minnesota slang video” with Minnesota native Tafoya and a “Super Bowl newlywed game” with Michaels and Collinsworth, according to Signor.

During the game, two staffers will roam around the stadium and field to capture interesting footage from the game and the stands.

All of this points to a bigger staff for Super Bowl Sunday, especially compared to regular-season NFL Sundays when NBC Sports might have three or four social and digital staffers covering football.

“We get the Super Bowl every three years,” Signor said. “This is something where we want to make sure we are on top of every moment possible — and there’s a lot more things to cover during the course of this week, and it’s all hands on deck.”

The post NBC is airing BuzzFeed and Complex shows before the Super Bowl appeared first on Digiday.

The looming ePrivacy Regulation is creating a new battleground in Europe: the race to own consumer login systems, for better or worse.

When and how publishers arrive there depends on their business models and markets. But in Germany, the login strategy is a tactic many are adopting to ensure their business’ sustainability, should they have to abide by the proposed ePrivacy law and gain consumer consent for all cookie use.

So far, the favored approach is login collectives made up of major publishing groups and nonpublisher partners. The reason: One publisher’s single login strategy doesn’t likely have the necessary scale to rival the login platforms of Google, Facebook, Amazon and Facebook. However, a combined login structure that spans multiple publishers, IP firms and other e-commerce brands potentially could.

A large proportion of German publishers are planning some form of login strategy to stave off the expected loss in advertising revenue, should the proposed ePrivacy law stand, according to a new report from VDZ, the Association of German Magazine Publishers. The same report has estimated that together, the German media market will lose upward of €300 million ($372 million) in yearly ad sales if the proposed version of the ePrivacy law holds.

Spiegel is among those examining login strategies as a contingency plan if the strict restrictions on cookie gathering are confirmed. “Doing more to own logins is definitely one of the most probable elements of the solution,” said Spiegel Online CEO Jesper Doub.

However, Doub also believes the rush to adopt login strategies could punish smaller brands and publishers in future, given the changes will result in the establishment of yet more walled gardens.

“I am afraid that if the regulation stays that simplified, free access to information and news will move behind registration and login hurdles,” he said. “This might not be impossible to do for big brands and publishers, but both the costs and complexity along with user behavior will make it impossible for smaller brands and publishers to survive, strengthening the big platforms’ and brands’ position in the market.”

It’s a view many other publishers interviewed as part of the VDZ report share. The hope is that in showing the extent of damage the regulation would cause to the media industry, the VDZ and its publisher members can convince the German government to push back on the terms of the law.

Programmatic advertising and retargeting will be among the areas hit hardest, according to the VDZ research, with 53 percent of the respondents polled saying they estimate the changes they’d have to make for the ePrivacy Regulation would cost their annual sales to tank by at least 30 percent. An even higher percentage — 67 percent — of publishers said they’d expect to lose more than 30 percent of sales on all programmatic advertising that uses retargeting, according to the same research.

Thanks to the arrival of the General Data Protection Regulation, the German market has already started on the groundwork for mass login systems. So far, there are two in Germany: One involves Axel Springer, auto manufacturer Daimler and German airline Lufthansa; broadcasters RTL Group and ProSiebenSat.1 lead the other.

The post With ePrivacy looming, German publishers scramble to get users logged in appeared first on Digiday.

Chipmunks, kissy lips and champagne bottles are becoming bones of contention in legal disputes; a court considers the ‘:P’

Like many hotel chains, the Spanish global brand Meli? Hotels International is rapidly evolving not just its digital marketing, but also how it interacts with customers once they’ve booked. Manuel Riego Corujedo, vp of global digital sales and marketing at Meli? Hotels, talked about how the company is building its digital channels while transforming the…

Every retail brand is trying to get more personal with its customers, but very few are doing it right. Here are five ways to win at the personalization game. 1. Collect good data Retailers need to collect both user-level data–like site traffic, shopping cart abandonment and basic analytics–as well as customer-specific data, such as shopping…

Beer spots tend to follow a similar (arguably outdated) formula: a bunch of young dudes partying it up while watching the Big Game and plenty of ice-cold brew to go around. But marketers might be missing out on some key demos. Origin’s survey of 2,000 beer drinkers analyzed preferences and habits across gender and generational…

In November, Marriott International installed an internet-connected mirror within a shower in the Irvine Marriott hotel located in Orange County, Calif., putting a new spin on “shower thoughts”–the idea that people’s best creative ideas and brainstorming take place in the shower. Steam from the shower first fogs up the mirror to create a digital whiteboard…