Due to the worldwide pandemic outbreak in early 2020, the beauty and personal luxury advertisement spend fell roughly in line with the market the same year. However, as per reports published by Zenith Business Intelligence, France and India will recover in 2021-22 as the beauty advertisement spend is estimated to grow at 2.6 per cent and rise to US$ 7.7 billion in 2022.
Beauty and personal luxury are defined as a combination of four sub-categories: cosmetics, fragrances, hair care and skin care, and with the new normal norms such as social distancing, lack of public gathering and not meeting in person, the demand for cosmetics and fragrances diminished and increased for hair and skin care, as consumers took hair care reins in their hands and salons and parlors were non-functional.
Most of the beauty brands will not increase their budgets significantly as the overall demand for beauty will not change much as consumers might remain reluctant to return to their pre-pandemic habits. Brands are also more likely to sell through various other channels apart from the old sales techniques. Beauty is essentially a category of appearance and thrives on its ability to create emotional connections through imagery in a high-quality environment. As per market reports, in 2020, beauty brands spent 18.3 per cent of their budgets on magazine advertising, 4.3 times more than the average brand, and 42.2 per cent on television.
The beauty and personal luxury brands are relatively slow to adopt to digital advertising and ecommerce because consumers feel the need to sample and try on beauty products in person before committing to a specific product. The brands spent 34.1 per cent of their budgets digitally in 2020, compared to 53.1 per cent for the market. The brands have stepped up investment in their ecommerce offerings as a matter of necessity, as bricks-and-mortar retail sales shrank. However, technologies like video-on-demand and connected TV, and social platforms such as Instagram, are creating new premium environments that showcase beauty and personal luxury brands effectively. Thus, digital channels become more valuable for both brand and performance advertising.
Global market reports also indicate that France is expected to be the best-performing beauty advertisement market over the next two years, growing by 13.3 per cent a year on an average.
On the other hand, India’s growth will be a result of strong consumer demand. Beauty advertisements spend was stable in the country in 2020 and is forecast to grow at an average of 7.6 per cent a year as more consumers take up the habit of regularly buying beauty products. Also, beauty and personal luxury ad spend is forecast to be 15.2 per cent higher in 2022 than it was in 2019.
Growth in beauty and personal luxury advertising will witness a lag while consumers remain cautious about travelling in public and meeting in person and hence the brands will invest in digital technology like e-commerce for more rapid growth.