For Beiersdorf, which was bent on deepening their penetration in the Scandinavian market and on pinning down new product concepts for the iconic Nivea brand, ReD came in to study the perception of beauty among Scandinavian women. The ambition was to create more consumer-driven products. ReD approached the study by spending time with several dozen women in eight Scandinavian cities, to understand how they perceived beauty, what motivates their beauty routines, and how those routines are structured.
What ReD discovered was that beauty is driven not by aesthetics but by attitude. While Scandinavian women have a low tolerance toward vanity, they see beauty as a social responsibility–they feel an obligation to take care of themselves. This helps them maximize their physical characteristics rather than focus on what they lack.
During the research we found that women longed for time during the day where they could retreat or have a moment to themselves and that they also responded to technology. The language around “scientifically proven formulas” and “natural ingredients” had the same motivating effect on women as did the language around gadgets for men. That signaled to ReD that there was a potential market around more impulsive purchases of beauty products that took on the look, feel, and language of gadgets.
With that in mind, ReD advised Nivea to create an emotionally driven brand of skin care using technologies or packaging that snapped or popped and which possessed the excitement of a gadget rather than of a beauty product.
But the products were also geared to the way otherwise strong and professional women created time for themselves to unwind and be vulnerable, often while handing an expert complete control over their beauty needs.
ReD’s findings gave Nivea a more sophisticated language with which to talk about beauty from a product development and marketing perspective–beauty was not just about supermodels, but about acquiring knowledge and defining a sense of style. ReD also showed Nivea how confidence played into the ways women were influenced, and that certain women prefer to take advice from their friends. As a result, Nivea pursued a marketing strategy that riffed off that idea: After women purchased a beauty product, they were given the opportunity to send large samples of that product to their friends. For Nivea, this proved significantly more effective than traditional advertising.