How Lancôme has succeed in seduce women in China

As the world’s leading brand of luxury cosmetics, Lancôme has spread into more than 40 Chinese cities and 18,000 retailers. In China, it is the leader in the market from the L’Oréal group that dominates the beauty business. So the question that many people ask is: how can Lancôme win the favor of women in China and become that much appreciated? What is their advertising strategy?

Lancôme China

Sectors: The turnover of the company is almost equally divided between these three segments: skincare, fragrance and makeup.

Lancôme targets a population with a relatively high standard of living, its client has a higher purchasing power than the average, and this is what the brand is trying to change. She tries more and more to reach all customers from all classes by creating different types of products in different scales, and therefore different prices and different ages. It affects all groups of women and what doesn’t change is the image of quality products.

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Lancôme brand defines itself as a timeless image of the eternal beauty

Products having more success in China are those for skin care. This is the most important activity of the brand. Indeed whitening products, dedicated mainly to the Asian continent, are an important factor in the development of brand awareness in the country.

To increase its popularity worldwide, Lancôme relies on numerous television and photographic media, especially thanks go to those muses like Isabella Rossellini, Uma Thurman, Juliette Binoche, Anne Hathaway, Julia Roberts, Kate Winslet, Penelope Cruz, or the latest … the Chinese favorite: Miss Emma Watson.

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The use of these stars allows the brand to increase its timeless side and affects all generations through the beauty of its products.

Lancôme conquest in China market

Lancôme’s success in China is mainly due to its positioning on the web and its adaptation to the local culture.

Indeed, Lancôme has introduced a system that allows any online shopper to pay the order upon receipt of the product. The product will be delivered by scooter, as is often done in the country.

Unlike many luxury brands which are still afraid to move online, Lancôme has in recent years developed a strong presence on the web. Since 1999, Lancôme has had an e-commerce website that allows any customer to buy their products online, which helps the brand to learn more about its prospects.

Lancôme is located on Chinese social networks (Kaixin, Renren, Sina Weibo) and this helps the brand build one of the biggest online communities in cosmetics.

Here’s Lancôme’s Weibo page. The post gets 5000 retweets and over 3000 comments. This is community management! 😉

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Lancôme and its opinion leader campaigns

The flagship brand of L’Oreal China has relied on KOL (key opinion leaders) to showcase its products. So if you type on Baidu Videos Lancôme in Chinese 兰蔻, you will find hundreds of videos featuring prominent people in makeup using Lancome products and doing demonstrations, such as Michel Phan.

The brand regularly invites influential people to the community to talk about the merits of its products to influence consumers.

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Emma Watson as Brand Ambassador

The brand last year really marked the spirit of the Chinese by choosing Emma Watson as the brand ambassador.

The Star is really appreciated by the Chinese public, pretty face, and is a symbol of purity, she embodies perfectly the ambitions of the brand.

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Lancôme also knows how to conquer her fans through events offline or online, such as for Chinese New Year. The brand gives more importance to its campaign during the Chinese New Year, which is a good marketing strategy given the importance of this date for the Chinese.

Lancôme is an innovative and creative company, that also uses operations buzz to win new prospects, like with the creation of the Lancôme bus, aimed to introduce new products of the brand to the Chinese population in second cities and third cities.

Click here for more information on the bus Lancôme

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Lancôme has launched its own forum about cosmetics

To seduce consumers in China, Lancôme has launched a new forum, a kind of social network, Rose Beauty, the first brand social network dedicated to beauty in China.

It gathers consumer brand + professionals makeup and allows them to share and keep them informed about the brand and products, and receive beauty tips.

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Rose Beauty Forum

This forum has already attracted more than 4 million users, and especially thanks to the administrators that make relay information and renew it continuously, to be in constant interaction with users. This community management was a great way to promote online Lancôme products, the best in the field of cosmetics.

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The dynamics of this forum Rose beauty was impressive: in 2011, 64% of the visitors come here more than one time a day. The interaction was very important. 45% of the topics had more than 5 clients’ comments.

The reasons for this success: a mix of conversation, information, and events.

Today the forum has been transformed into a kind of Pinterest where users share their best finds in the luxury and cosmetics sectors.

To attract a younger clientele, the latest innovation from Lancôme is an iPhone / iPad application, to allow consumers to virtually test new products and receive professional advice.

For the launch of its mascara “Hypnose Doll Eyes”, Lancôme has created an animated film like “teasing” which depicts like dolls the avatars of 3 of his muses and an application for women to create a virtual avatar to their image!

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Lancôme, a case study in digital in China

Lancôme is developing more and more digitally, especially in China, where the web is widely used by the population, especially in large cities. To communicate with a maximum on these various actions and creations, Lancôme uses its websites (Lancôme website, Rose beauty), social networks, and blog “Make-Up Blog”.

Most luxury cosmetics brands do not create links with their community, which is absolutely not the case with Lancôme.

The presented brand has a strict top-down relationship, whereas interaction is possible. Lancôme has launched a campaign highlighting its users “who is the girl Rose Beauty”

“Http://www.rosebeauty.com.cn/bbs/lancome_bbs_280100.html” previously on this post

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Who is Rose beauty Girl?

It all started when a forum member posted a message explaining that Lancôme enriched her life and made her more beautiful. The emotional message touched the moderation team that decided to meet this girl.

Soon, thousands of Chinese said that their sisters, neighbors, or colleagues were “Rose beauty.” More than 100,000 people took part in the campaign or fun for the participants.

The Rose beauty girl is called Cherry, and she was finally found, but the most important thing for the campaign was the closeness of the brand and press coverage of this story.

Morality: it must be focused on the user!

Lancôme is focused on Digital in China for a long time and is regularly named as one of the top 10 brands with the highest digital budget.

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Prospects of men market

The brand announced that it would also be interested in the men’s market.

Since 5 years ago, Lancôme has been selling anti-aging products and perfume for men, as Chinese women buy more and more products for their companions.

Will the brand succeed in creating the same interaction with men? Hard to say…

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