I don't know if you also realize that the launch of new beauty products presents a new paradigm: the "three-step" structure of the brand's high-level speech + R&D expert **doctor sharing + celebrity artist platform.
When many press conferences directly defined the title as "XX Technology Summit", the technical stories around the application of new products have also become the core agenda of the audience. Therefore, compared with the professional skin care knowledge and efficacy principles brought by scientific research experts, the stars who appeared in the finale seem to have become the "supporting roles" who enliven the atmosphere of the scene, and often talk about the use of products and skin care secrets, just like the "script" ten years ago.
Such a scene has long been common in China's beauty market under the fever of technology in the past two years, and many celebrities have lost focus on brand conferences and "punched in" has become a reality for all to see.
So, how much commercial value does celebrity endorsements, which have always been expensive and have certain risks, still have a lot of commercial value for beauty brands that are currently struggling to do business? Entering 2024, what changes have quietly taken place in the way of choosing spokespersons for beauty?
fbeauty Future Traces" combed and found that in the past year, the number of celebrities who have cooperated with the official titles of spokesperson, ambassador, and best friend of beauty brands has exceeded 50. This covers domestic and foreign brands such as local cutting-edge, luxury beauty, and high-end beauty.
From the point of view of the time node, the official announcement of the brand at the nodes such as Double 11 is more frequent, creating momentum for new products and **. In terms of quantity, brand ambassadors and best friends have the most short-term and flexible titles, far more than the real "spokesperson" at the top of the business cooperation pyramid.
Spokespersons take a long-term view and consider more about brand value, while other titles are more about marketing and traffic value. Chen Jiajun, founder of ICG brand marketing consulting, analyzed to "Fbeauty Future Traces".
In addition to the above seemingly new highlights, there are two other trends worth paying attention to:
First of all, the "official announcement" of local cutting-edge brands has become more and more.
It can be seen from ** that in the past year, local beauty and body care brands such as Unique Irene, Yilian, and Leaven Color have successively announced their first brand spokespersons, Zhang Ruonan, Tan Songyun and Yu Shuxin, who are sweet-looking, immature, and currently hot 90 flowers and 95 flowers, and most of the fan groups are the younger generation.
In addition, Caitang, a makeup brand under Proya, also officially announced its first brand ambassador, Chen Duling, in January 2024. It is worth noting that this is also the first time that Caitang has officially announced its cooperation with celebrities, and it is at the brand's special 10th anniversary node.
Compared with the wide opening and closing of beauty groups, these cutting-edge brands are more cautious about celebrity collaborations. For example, the cooperation between Yilian and Tan Songyun began in 2022, and the initial title was only spray spokesperson, and she appeared as the first image spokesperson of Yilian spray series. After a year, he was "upgraded" to the brand ambassador.
Nowadays, cutting-edge brands with stable business volume and distinctive personality choose endorsement marketing, obviously hoping to better convey their brand concept. For example, the official of Unique Irene pointed out that the image of "self-consistency and tenacity" conveyed by Zhang Ruonan is consistent with the core attitude of "love, independence and self-confidence" of the brand, which can help it convey the spirit of the brand.
Secondly, international high-end brands still prefer artists with huge traffic and a relatively stable external image.
For example, the global skincare spokesperson of YSL is Xiao Zhan, the global fragrance spokesperson of Armani is Wang Jiaer, and the spokesperson of Guerlain perfume chooses Wang Hedi.
In addition, for more important full-line endorsements or global endorsements, the more well-known international superstars are the favorites of these high-end brands. For example, the Armani beauty brand ambassador is Hollywood actress Sadie. Zink, Shiseido's global spokesperson is Anne Hathaway and others.
is also an endorsement, and in order to consolidate their image, international brands choose bigwig-level international superstars because they themselves have a lot of space for humanities topics. For example, Armani saw the talented young actor Sadie Zink with the bravery and fearlessness of contemporary women, hoping to "empower" women while showcasing the brand's natural and inner beauty.
It is worth mentioning that with the increase in celebrity "house collapse" incidents in recent years, national-level athletes have also become the "sweethearts" of beauty brands. In the past year, many brands have officially announced athletes as brand ambassadors.
In this regard, Yang Zhenghua, the founder of Shangqi Advertising Company, said bluntly, "The value of athletes in shaping the image of beauty brands is not big as a whole, and it is more related to the company's image."
To sum up, it can be seen that although there are differences between Chinese and foreign brands in the selection of spokespersons, the overall image, traffic, and risk value of celebrities are always important factors for brands to pay attention to. However, in the era of information fragmentation, the business value of "spokespersons" at the top of the marketing investment pyramid has also begun to be more scrutinized and reflected.
It is obvious to all that the commercial value of celebrity spokespersons is declining.
First, consumers know that this is advertising for the brand. Second, although they are spokespersons, celebrities have very little time to give to brands, and they cannot do fine social operations, and can only be used for traditional communication paths. For example, lightbox films, advertising videos, flat drafts, etc., are difficult to use in the search section. Therefore, the propagation benefit and potential energy generated are not very high. An industry veteran marketer who did not want to be named analyzed.
A more realistic problem is that with the change in the role status between fans and celebrities, coupled with the fragmentation of traffic, the fan economy has long been not as hot as it used to be.
According to the "2022 China Fan Economy Research Report" from the Toubao Research Institute, the current fan economy has gone through the relationship of admiration, consumption, and follower. In the 0 era, it has come to the booster relationship that fans have the power to create power, organization and communication40 times. From "celebrities attract fans" in the past to "fans create stars", fans also enjoy the sense of accomplishment brought by this "power creation" more. At the same time, capital is giving fans more right to speak, and celebrities' voice and leadership are weakening.
In this context, the entertainment industry has even derived a kind of "humiliation chasing fans". This kind of fan is more like an extreme career fan, expressing love on the one hand, and making dissatisfaction and demands on the idol on the other, even in the form of insults. "Loyalty is good for deeds", is the rhetoric of this kind of fans to the outside world.
As you can see,This change of strong discourse power has also made the fan economy completely out of 3In the "follow-up consumption" model of the 0 era, the effect of celebrity endorsements and live streaming to achieve traffic monetization is quietly weakening.
In addition, with the development of Internet technology, the ecology of the fan economy is becoming more and more abundant, and it is no longer limited to the pan-entertainment industry. Sectors such as celebrities, IPs, influencers, and brands are all grabbing the public's attention. The content that can be "fanned" is no longer limited to celebrities, substantive works or content, and the public's attention is naturally distracted.
On the one hand, many artists now reject the fan economy. On the other hand, there is not much chance for the brand to use social ** to strengthen communication, and it will be intervened by brokers. The traffic conversion rate is getting less and less, and the investment return of the spokesperson is very low. Yang Zhenghua concluded.
So, under the reality that the conversion value is not high, can the celebrity spokesperson still play the role of conveying the brand tonality and concept as the brand wishes?
The above-mentioned senior marketing people in the industry believe that "in the era of rational consumption, whether the desired result of the brand can be achieved depends on the consumer's perception of the brand, and the brand concept actually transmitted by the brand in the market behavior must ultimately be implemented in the product experience." Spokespeople can only play the role of icing on the cake. ”
The paradox is that under the general lack of sufficient communication content advantages of brands, even if the commercial value declines, these endorsement artists are indispensable.
After all, "the impression and memory brought by a simple product display to customers are far less impressive than a flesh-and-blood real person who is well-known to the public." The above-mentioned person told "fbeauty future traces", for example, at the press conference with a sense of science and technology, in addition to contributing some emotional content to convey value, the greater significance is to lower the communication threshold, and the natural storytelling and appeal are conducive to the spread of the event on social platforms.
Chen Jiajun emphasized to "fbeauty Future Traces" that when looking at the commercial value of the spokesperson, brands should comprehensively consider the short-term "traffic value" and the long-term "brand value". "In the short term, the signing and promotion of spokespersons are indeed not as obvious as in the past, but they are still an important means of brand marketing. ”
More importantly, the decline of this effect is putting forward higher requirements for the marketing work of beauty brands - it is no longer who is hot and who is hot, and a combination of social platforms is effective, but it is necessary to have a clearer definition of its own brand positioning, image, core communication information, etc., and intelligently choose the right spokesperson to empower the brand.
Obviously, at present, the spokesperson marketing of beauty brands is in a "dilemma" that is difficult to break through.
After a slightly weak 2023, the "self-pleasing" consumption trend of beauty is becoming more and more obvious. Most beauty brands are marketing with the word "emotion" in mind. It has become an important marketing method for brands to gain a deeper insight into consumers' minds, observe consumers' spiritual world, and link users through short dramas, exhibitions, and public welfare activities.
However, this kind of "emotional" marketing, which is highly suitable for consumers, cannot be well integrated with celebrity spokespersons.
On the one hand, the current marketing of beauty brands is very short, flat and fast, usually celebrity marketing goes to Weibo, drainage goes to Douyin, and grass goes to Xiaohongshu, giving celebrities a relatively modular space to continue to ferment and disseminate value.
In addition to relying on their own popularity to attract traffic, if the spokesperson also wants to play a role that can truly convey the brand proposition, the celebrity itself needs to have a very deep brand awareness. The above-mentioned marketing source told "fbeauty future traces". But in reality, it is very likely that the brand itself lacks in-depth communication with the spokesperson in this regard, and only values celebrity traffic. Even some brands are not very clear about their brand proposition, and they are not highlighted in daily exhibitions and activities, so they naturally cannot constitute a chain communication effect, and they get twice the result with half the effort.
In addition, some brand market launchers also bluntly said that most celebrities, as commercial products, will not really think about the true meaning of cooperation with brands. "Behind the money transaction, consumers can perceive whether the celebrity truly agrees with the brand. ”
It is also worth mentioning that there are more and more brands taking the "science and technology" route, and the stars themselves have a strong sense of entertainment, and the adaptability to rigorous scientific theories is not high, and there is a "gap" between many people and the core of the brand.
Under the influence of various factors, for many brands, the only meaning of the cooperation of celebrity spokespersons is "drainage", which is also the reason why there are many cases of marketing endorsements, but there are few classics.
When brands start to use spokespersons, especially for long generations rather than short generations, they are actually studying their own brand image and investing in brand building. In this case, the spokesperson is the fastest way to leave a memory in the consumer's mind. This is a brand investment behavior, and the main purpose is not to obtain a temporary ROI conversion. Yang Zhenghua thinks.
Chen Jiajun also said that signing a spokesperson is not only a "tactic", but also a "strategy".
The latter needs to consider its own brand positioning, image, core brand equity and other factors. Brand is a long-term systematic work, spokesperson is an important means of brand building, and it is necessary to plan short-term decisions with a long-term vision. ”
Among the many celebrity endorsements in the beauty industry, Yang Zhenghua analyzed that Gong Li's cooperation with L'Oreal Group for more than 20 years is the most special. "The two have gone beyond a simple, simple merchandising cooperation to an important part of building a corporate image. It also coincides with the theme of 'beauty' created by the group to a certain extent. ”
In his opinion, "this is one of the more ideal states of spokesperson." ”
Today, the realization of the commercial value of celebrity endorsement is a complex business model under the influence of many factors. In the context of irreversible trends, what brands need to do is to polish their eyes, weigh their money bags and investment goals, stabilize the word, and maximize the short-term marketing value and long-term brand value.
Written by Lin Yu.
Proofread by Li Lin.