Cosmetic Industry Advertising Analysis- Prime focus on L'Oreal - Essay Example

L’Oreal is one such cosmetic company who with their effective advertising campaigns is able to attract consumers from various cultures from all the over, thereby achieving sizable profits and in the process becoming the largest cosmetics and beauty company of the world. Among the many industries, the cosmetic industry is an ever expanding one, as the desire of the people to look as well as feel good has been increasing, irrespective of gender, age, culture, etc. L’Oreal Group is able to cater to these segments of consumers by offering products for hair care, hair colouring, skin care as well as beautifying products in three international brands, namely L’Oreal Paris, Garnier and Maybelline.

One of the key as well as successful branding cum advertising strategy adopted by L’Oreal and missed by its competitors is the reaching out to the customers of different countries of the world, across different income ranges and cultural patterns. (finance.mapsofworld.com). That is, instead of focusing on one country or even a particular continent and one target customer base, L’Oreal has and is still expanding to newer markets with various products as part of differentiation strategy. “L'Oreal uses different brands to attract different markets…shows no desire to create the world in its own, singular image” (Haig 2006).

Importantly, in their operations worldwide, L’Oreal comes up with advertisement campaigns which cater to the local population, even while maintaining an international look. International look in the sense, even if L’Oreal come up with advertisements catering to the local population featuring local celebrities or models, they make sure that the celebrity or even the model has an non-ethnic international facial features. On the other hand, some international advertisements with international celebrities are also showcased in other countries, with the language or voice over dubbed in the local language.

In addition, the advertisements are shot by International advertising agencies to give that look. This can be seen in the key market of India, where L’Oreal advertisements although have local celebrities like Former Miss World and Indian actress Aishwarya Rai, it projects an international look. “Cosmetics major L’Oreal uses international advertising for its brands like the hair.” (Jacob 2002).Thus, it is clear that as “a result of this transnational approach, L'Oreal is apparently able to maintain a similar image for all its brands wherever they are sold.

” (Bogucki and Kredens 2010). While its competitors are now only following L’Oreal’s path and are diversifying and entering various markets. That is, these companies mainly catered to the local market and people of particular ethnicity and race, and so their advertising campaigns had a certain market centric ‘look’. For example, Shiseido, Japan’s number one cosmetics company and fourth largest in the world, exhibited this behaviour as they mainly focused on the Asia-Pacific region and thereby came up with advertising campaigns that predominantly featured Asian models.

However, following the model set by the L’Oreal, Shiseido also wants to become a global player by showcasing international advertisements as well as local advertisements with international look. “We want to become more of a global company like L'Oreal,'' says Yoshikuni