Brand content to create and maintain a bond between the brand and the consumer
Brand content is a rapidly growing communication methodology. It is classically defined as a tool enabling a brand to create a lively and strong relationship with the consumer through the creation and distribution of high-value content that goes beyond product-centered communication.
The interest for the brand is thus to capture the attention of consumers and develop their loyalty by providing them with a variety of content within which they find a world that they can adhere to and identify with.
Generally, the adoption of this form of marketing by brands gives rise to a deployment of analogous means independent of the universes to which they belong. However, cosmetics brands must integrate certain specificities in the form and orientation of the deployment of brand content due to the particularities of their market.
In cosmetics, brand content is scientific by nature
The cosmetics market has a number of particularities. First, the brands that compose it are continuously creating increasingly technical products, bringing innovations to their form, their active ingredients and even to their targeted biological actions. Furthermore, these innovations and the science behind the products continue to be a major impetus for the preferences of consumers and their choices in the cosmetics market. Thus, brand content in cosmetics must be scientific, at least in part, to address this important desire for science among consumers.
However, in this atypical market, before creating brand content disconnected from specific product communication, it is essential to construct a brand dialog, built upon scientific subject matter, to define a brand’s position and promote the attributes of its products.
Scientific brand content therefore appears to be a necessity for cosmetics brands, contributing to these latter its specific capacity to fuse brand content in its original definition—service and information—with that more directly related to classic product communication, both vectors for brand affinity.
Scientific brand content: Why?
– To stand out: In a hyper-competitive market where new companies appear continuously, it is imperative for brands and products to differentiate themselves from the others. For a new hyaluronic acid anti-aging product, this could take the form of leveraging its singularizing characteristics: micronization, encapsulation, production methods, associated compounds, etc. If these intrinsic aspects do not suffice, differentiation could be accomplished through an visual, suggested through a graphical representation. However, simply being unique is not enough; it is also vital to enable the perception of the interest of using the product among consumers, to arouse their desire.
– To seduce and convince: Although it is not impossible to communicate the promise of a cosmetic product or brand through its constitutional science, this task is often better served by an inspirational approach. Nonetheless, in the increasingly technical and scientific cosmetics environment, scientific brand content plays the primordial role of affirming the expertise behind the product. It establishes the brand’s legitimacy on the market.
– To teach and win over opinion makers: Opinion makers must understand and appropriate a product to provide a recommendation. Scientific brand content provides these influencers with information they need to understand the complex biological, medical and technical aspects of today’s cosmetics.
Scientific brand content: How?
In substance: As is reflected by the current rejection of retouched photos vaunting unattainable ideals and perfection, today’s consumers are no longer looking for overdone promises; they desire truth, or at least sincerity. Scientific brand content must thus be exact and credible. It needs to be expressed clearly and simply to remain accessible, and fairly and unpretentiously to ensure unfettered adhesion. The discourse of brands is evolving as is the expression of the science behind them.
In form: Scientific brand content is expressed through different means (claims for a product, expressions of technologies, visualization of a mode of action) and modes (text, graphical representation, images, videos etc.) to enable the deployment of the range of content throughout the brand’s points of consumer contact (websites, mobile applications, social networks, stores, etc.).
Scientific brand content: With whom?
In a context of increasingly restrictive regulations for continuously evolving scientific fields such as cosmetology, dermo-cosmetology or medical devices, specific expertise is required for the development of scientific brand content, so as to ensure faultless management of those regulatory aspects and the perfect comprehension of the issues involved. However, to be innovative, a capacity for creativity is also needed, to energize both form and substance.
Scientific brand content has become a specialty at Effiscience. We accompany our clients in the definition and illustration of scientific communication for their brands, whatever the technical level may be.
From my experience in R&D, I have always kept in mind that "talent in research is to look at what everyone has already looked at and to see what no one has ever seen". Today still, this is a daily exercise: look from another angle, remain open to other possibilities, and always question oneself to remain exact and persuasive. This challenge energizes the Effiscience team every day and motivates us to bring innovation to brands.
