Are C-Beauty Brands Overspending on Idols?
When it comes to marketing tactics, new and up-coming C-Beauty brands are some of the most innovative and we often feature their campaigns in our content.
But we also have to consider if the campaigns are driving real ROI. Some of these brands are spending massive budgets on celebrity sponsorships, but is this level of spending sustainable? Are they actually generating loyal customers?
Let’s have a look at Proya
A brand that works with a lot of idols is Proya, who aims to leverage these idols to grow awareness and build a closer relationship with consumers. But are they going a little overboard? It seems like they are constantly adding new idols to their roster.
If you don’t know who the hot idols in China are at the moment, you can have a look at Proya’s ambassadors. For example, last month, Proya announced its collaboration with Xu Jiaqi (许佳琪), a contestant in a popular reality TV show called Youth With You: Season 2 (青春有你2), and she has successfully joined a girl group called THE 9.
Other than Xu, Proya has worked with quite a few male idols as this is the current trend among beauty brands. A super idol Proya has signed with is Cai Xukun (蔡徐坤) who became famous because of another reality TV show called Idol Producer (偶像练习生). Cai has over 32 million followers on Weibo and he is currently appointed by Prada as its global ambassador.
Proya also once worked with a popular Korean celebrity Song Zhongji (宋仲基) and arranged offline gatherings for his Chinese fans. When working with another male celebrity Li Yifeng(李易峰), Proya specifically had a subway line with ads featured in Li and its oceanic product line. The brand also had Li’s images show up on landmark buildings’ screens in a few big cities.
Proya is enjoying the huge traffic that working with idols brings. But how’s the ROI, and are they able to retain customers when switching to new idols? Let’s do a little bit of math. If we go back to the recent campaign with female idol Xi Jiaqi, she was helping Proya promote an eye cream gift set and the announcement on July 15 helped the brand sell over 5,000 sets in the presale. A set costs ¥244, so in total the presale brought at least ¥1.2M for Proya.
From speaking with a celebrity agent, I learned that signing with Xu costs around ¥2M a year. We don’t know if Proya signed with Xu for a series of campaigns or for an entire year, but based on that cost, plus all the other costs required for promotion, Proya would be lucky to break even on that campaign.
And remember, she’s probably one of the cheaper idols Proya is collaborating with. Cai Xukun costs around ¥8M a year. With an average product price point of 50-300 RMB, Proya would need very strong sales to make up the cost of its flood of idols collabs.
On top of cost, Proya is making two other mistakes:
- It is just choosing whoever is the hottest new idol and not trying to build long term relationships with idols that fit the brand image. There is not a lot of consistency and it’s hard to figure out how the idols represent the brand.
- Proya is constantly switching idols, however, the change of ambassadors might cause a loss of customers. For example, Song Zhongji’s followers buy the brand’s products because they want to show support for their idols. When Proya changed its ambassador to Li Yifeng, Song’s followers might not continue to be Proya’s customers because Proya has not done much to develop a relationship with them.
Approaching Celebrity Ambassadors the Right Way
A good example of a C-Beauty brand working with celebrities would be Florasis or Huaxizi (花西子). The brand was founded in 2017, and in 2018, its sales figure was 43.1M RMB. It made huge progress in 2019 with 1.1 billion RMB in sales.
Florasis is known for its strong emphasis on ancient Chinese elements with very recognizable product design and packaging. Unlike other brands that work with multiple ambassadors, Florasis is very single-minded. So far, it has worked with 3: top live streamer Austin Li (李佳琦), actress Ju Jingyi (鞠婧祎) and supermodel Du Juan (杜鹃).
Each of them has a purpose:
Austin drives traffic and can give the product quality and colors credibility. He has also worked with the brand behind the scenes on product and branding development as well as marketing strategy.
Ju became an ambassador in May 2019, not long after she was featured in a popular costume drama that launched that April. Ju is also well-known for her ancient Chinese characteristics. Her style is in line with Florasis’ brand image. The powder featured in the Weibo announcement achieved 120M RMB sales in November 2019.
Florasis’ current ambassador is model Du Juan. She is very low-key and people often relate her to eastern vintage beauty. Bingo again!
Another example is Colorkey, founded in 2018, it has become the top seller in the lip gloss category, surpassing Perfect Diary and Korean brand 3CE (acquired by L’Oreal). Colorkey targets at post-95s consumers and the brand embodies a sense of coolness and independence to its consumers.
In May 2020, Colorkey announced its partnership with a top idol rapper and singer Wang Ziyi (王子异), former member of a Chinese boy group called Nine Percent now turned solo artist, and then in July announced another ambassador Liu Boxin (刘柏辛) or Lexie Liu, a rapper, singer, songwriter who came in 4th in China’s 2018 hit reality show The Rap of China. Both of these celebrities are known for their rapping, and their personalities and style fit the Colorkey brand.
Conclusion
It seems like there is a new C-beauty brand popping up every day and the competition to survive and be successful is fierce. Working with celebrities can no doubt bring traffic for these young brands, but in order to drive real ROI and sustained growth, brands need to be more thoughtful when choosing ambassadors and not simply go after the hottest new artist.
