The Campaign

APEX-i is a made-to-order cosmetics brand created by careful analysis of the human skin. However, Japanese women’s beauty awareness decreases significantly as they have families. So our objective was to get the targeted women who have families to change their perception towards beauty through this PR campaign and show interest in this order-made beauty product. Our strategy was to spark their lost pride through skin analysis. As a creative execution, we launched a “Beauty War” project. First of all, the APEX-i skin analysis results were made into “battle format” data graphs, which consisted of entries like wrinkles and spots. The battle data was then categorized by prefecture and we started a nationwide project to decide the “prefecture with the most beautiful women”. “Skin analysis events” were soon taking place nationwide. The website is updated on a real-time basis, showing the strength of each prefecture. Consequently, over one hundred thousand women participated during the PR campaign. From the enormous skin data collected, the prefecture with the most beautiful women in Japan was finally decided. The results of the battle immediately became front-page news throughout Japan. As a result, over 100 thousand women participated in the promotion campaign. Media exposure reached 4.5 million dollars. The number of skin analysis increased to 230% compared to the previous year. The sales increased to 150％ compared to the previous year. The result the brand’s market share increased by 17.3 points. Due to the birth of “Beauty War”, Japanese women started aiming for beautiful skin once again.

The Brief

Our goal is for the targeted women who have families to change their perception towards beauty through PR campaigns and get them to be interested once more in cosmetic products as they once did in the past. The final goal is to get them to purchase more products and raise the shares in the shrinking brand through the process of increasing the number of skin analysis.

Results

Business Goals: -During the promotional campaign 124,000 people participated in the skin analysis. The number of skin analysis gathered in one month topped that of the past twenty years. -In the end, the number of skin analysis increased buy 230% compared to the previous year. -Product sales increase due to skin analysis numbers are up 150% compared to the same month during the previous year. The result the brand’s market share increased by 17.3 points. Communication Goals: -Media exposure reached 4.5 million dollars. Breakdown being: 38 television programs, 150 newspapers and 280 web related media. -Over 400,000 tweets on Twitter were generated during the campaign. -Website garnered 2.1 million visits during the campaign. -News of the Beauty War became the top topic of 2012 within beauty related media. (Kirei Style, Biyo PRESS, biteki.com, Be-Core.net)

Execution

We chose to start the Beauty War campaign in August, which is the month where women are most sensitive towards their skin against the summer sun. To get women all across Japan to become interested and involved in the Beauty War, we held PR events with famous actresses. Events where skin analysis was gathered were put into effect across all 47 prefectures. This was the first of it’s kind in beauty events and therefore became a subject of conversation. In order to reach the targeted group, advertising in newspapers, magazines, posters and banners were deployed. Furthermore, to get each prefecture to have more pride in their own area, creative messages were created for each area. In the end, the data gathered from over 100,000 people during the campaign was used to decide the prefecture with the most beautiful women. This is how winner of the Beauty War was decided.

The Situation

After researching the Japanese women’s awareness towards beauty, we have found that women when starting to raise families quickly lose interest in skin care, and data shows that the awareness in the target of women between the age of 30~50 is half of that compared to women between the age of 10~20. This decrease in the awareness towards beauty plays a major factor in the sales of the product.

The Strategy

To get women to regain their lost sense of beauty awareness, we developed a PR campaign called, “The Beauty War” which involved women all across Japan. It was a battle for beauty between women based on their skin data. First of all we executed skin analysis events in all prefectures across Japan. We then took the gathered skin data such as blemishes and wrinkles and converted them into battle format. The gathered battle data was then added up within each prefecture and the nationwide project to find the prefecture with the most beautiful women was put into effect. The aim was to get targeted women to once again regain their beauty awareness through the implementation of a beauty war created from the skin data.