Recently, the lingerie brand Victoria's Secret announced that American actor Darren Barnet will become its first ever male spokesperson. Darren Barnet was born into an ethnically integrated family of Swiss, German, Japanese, and Native American ancestry, and Darren Barnet has recently become known for starring in the Netflix hit comedy Never Have I Ever.
It is reported that Darren Barnet is responsible for endorsing the genderless series of Victoria's Secretary's side line VS Pink, and will also be involved in the planning and creation of products thereafter. VS Pink is a product line that focuses on young female customers, different from the sexy and mature tone of Victoria's Secret main line, VS Pink focuses on shaping the atmosphere of youth and vitality, and the product color is mainly based on a very girly pink.
Darren Barnet
Amy Hauk, CEO of VS Pink, said in the brand statement, "We are delighted to announce this partnership as Darren Barnet is a positive role model for young people. As brands continue to focus on expanding gender-free products for long-term growth, we expect our partners to not only represent the diversity of our customers, but also embody individuality and confidence. ”
The appointment of the new spokesperson can be seen as a continuation of Victoria's Secret brand transformation strategy. With sexy marketing represented by Victoria's Secret Angels and underwear shows, Victoria's Secret once dominated the underwear industry.
Victoria's Secret Angel, the IP that is most closely tied to the brand, is actually an image template created to cater to men's preferences. In the selection of Victoria's Secret Angels, the brand has extremely strict rules on the body of the model. In 2018, Ed Razek, former chief marketing officer of Victoria's Secret parent company L Brands, said in an interview, "No one has any interest in seeing transgender people or plus-size models on Victoria's Secret shows, they don't help the fashion show, because Victoria's Secret shows should be fantasies." The remarks immediately led to a collective consumer boycott, causing the brand image to instantly fall to the bottom.
The backwardness of brand identity is also clearly reflected in the sales figures. Since sales reached $7.78 billion in fiscal 2016, Victoria's Secret's performance has turned downwards and fallen into weakness. To return to growth, brands began to adapt their strategies to the needs of today's consumers. "Diversity" is the first hand played by Victoria's Secret, which is no longer limited to the traditional sexy body, greatly improves the body and skin color diversity of the co-models, and comprehensively and diversifies the beauty of women.
Today, Victoria's Secret has added a male spokesperson, and although it also exalts the name of "diversity", its tasks are slightly different. Female spokespeople with different styles may have been mainly designed to optimize the brand image, while male spokespeople have an additional layer of purpose to affect the minds of male consumers in addition to this function. Darren Barnet is mainly promoting the genderless lingerie series, and for female users who are already fans of Victoria's Secret, there is not much resistance to trying new products. On the contrary, Victoria's Secret has long been regarded as a female brand in the eyes of male consumers, and if men want to break the inherent cognition of Victoria's Secret consumption, then it is natural to need a high-potential opinion leader to take the lead in weakening the brand's exclusive female color.
Similarly, the domestic brand Banana, which originated with underwear without underwire, also adopted the same path, and in October 2020, the official xuanWang Yibo was the brand spokesperson. It is worth noting that Banana has actually signed Zhou Dongyu as a spokesperson before, and the reason why Wang Yibo was added to the spokesperson camp, in addition to the huge traffic accumulated by the star, the brand also wants to borrow Wang Yibo to hedge the inherent female orientation of the brand. Because of the market law of "a blockbuster is not enough to support a company", after the banana has no underwear inside, it takes the "basic model" as the main line and gradually expands the product matrix to cover the male market. Handing over series such as home, socks and sunscreen to Wang Yibo is actually to accelerate the out-of-the-loop of new products to attract more male consumers.
Unlike lingerie brands, beauty brands began using male spokespeople earlier. Some analysts said that compared with female spokespeople, male spokespeople can strengthen the female consumers' sense of yearning for the brand, and then attract them to try new things. The most emblematic example is that in the mid-1990s, Japanese beauty brand Kanebo invited Takuya Kimura, who became popular for her tv series "Long Vacation", to endorse lipstick products. This lipstick advertisement, which was first filmed by a male star, caused a lot of sensations as soon as it was broadcast, and the advertising line "Put on lipstick to find me" also became a popular phrase of the year. With Takuya Kimura's grass belt, Kanebo's lipstick sold a record 3 million units in just two months.
Takuya Kimura's Words Kanebo
Therefore, the use of men's wear spokespersons by beauty brands is based on the starting point of creating a marketing spectacle, and the importance of creating explosive points is even higher than the sales conversion that the spokesperson can bring.
Over time, beauty brands have appointed male spokespersons more frequently, and have also derived distinct regional characteristics.
In the United States, male beauty bloggers are more likely to be favored by brands than male celebrities. A month ago, Dior Beauty announced the appointment of beauty blogger Sean Garrette as its latest spokesperson. With nearly 90,000 followers on Instagram, Sean Garrette is widely known for producing easy-to-learn beauty tutorials. Sean Garrette's greatest characteristic is that he is a person of color. When he discovered that the beauty industry didn't provide enough teaching information for people of color, Sean Garrette targeted the gap in the market and incorporated more useful advice for people of color into the tutorial content, making it its signature feature.
Sean Garrette
Coincidentally, Covergirl and Maybelline have also joined hands with beauty bloggers in recent years, appointing James Charles and Manny Gutierrez as the brand's first male spokespersons, respectively. It is worth mentioning that in the Chinese, James Charles and Manny Gutierrez are actually "Beauty Boy" type bloggers, this type of blogger is known for directing strong and ostentatious makeup, shiny eyeshadow, thick eyelashes and gorgeous lips are its signature features, so the first products that James Charles and Manny Gutierrez are responsible for endorsing are mascara. Products such as liquid foundation, which are not the usual purchases of male consumers. Manny Gutierrez once explained in an interview that makeup for him is not "makeup like a woman", but an art form that men can access.
The U.S. favors male bloggers because most of them are advocates of the idea of diversity and inclusion, with Sean Garrette representing fairness for people of color and James Charles and Manny Gutierrez representing queer groups and cross-dressing culture. By bundling with these opinion leaders, brands are able to quickly promote their positional claims and gain favorability from consumers who pursue emotional expression.
James Charles
In addition, compared with celebrities, beauty bloggers are more able to play a role in brand endorsement because of their deep expertise. Commenting on the partnership with Dior Beauty, Sean Garrette said: "In the high-end skincare space, I feel that Dior is currently in a slightly underrated position. Therefore, my cooperation with Dior is not just to simply recommend new products, but to introduce the technology and efficacy of the product in depth. For Dior, they have skincare products that work well, and my job is to educate consumers about why Dior's beauty products are so good, why Dior makes them, and how consumers can incorporate them into their daily skincare routines. ”
In contrast, brands in the Chinese market prefer to engage in dialogue with consumers through traffic idols. Since Lu Han became the image spokesperson of Lancome Greater China in 2016, the boom of male stars endorsing beauty brands has begun in China. According to CBNData statistics, from 2017 to 2020, the number of domestic male celebrity beauty endorsements has soared from less than 50 to the 200 mark, an increase of more than 4 times. In March last year, as many as 22 beauty brands announced that male celebrities were acting as spokespersons in just one month.
According to a survey by American management consulting firm Kearney, in the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, France and Japan, the proportion of consumers who will buy celebrity recommended products basically does not exceed 40%. By comparison, Chinese consumer decisions are 78% more likely to be influenced by celebrity endorsements, while only 63% are influenced by influencers. From the statistics released by Kearney, it is not difficult to see that compared with consumers in other countries, celebrities are obviously more effective for Chinese consumers, and their effect is better than that of Internet celebrity bloggers.
Wang Yibo
Gu Zheng, marketing director of domestic beauty brand Spring and Summer, admitted in an interview that "in the past two years, the driving force of male spokespeople is indeed stronger than that of female spokespeople." Especially for skincare brands with women as the main audience, the appeal and influence of male artists are greater. According to the statistics of the domestic entertainment big data service provider Ai Man, the proportion of female fans of female celebrities is basically below 70%, while the fan base of male celebrities is usually at least 80% female, and this rate can even exceed 90% in top idols. The female fans of male celebrities are mostly in the age group of 14 to 25 years old, which happens to be the main group of beauty consumers.
It is worth mentioning that male celebrities can not only bring a sharp increase in sales figures for the brand, but also achieve strong and sustained exposure for the brand. Male celebrities have a high degree of stickiness and activity, and are good at "blogging" the star-related content on social media (repeatedly forwarding a Weibo), which is undoubtedly a great benefit for the brand to promote products. Some insiders pointed out that compared with the purchase of hard and wide resources, it will be more cost-effective to spend the same price to hire a spokesperson, because it can obtain more spontaneous forwarding and positive word-of-mouth precipitation.
In fact, there has always been no shortage of male beauty bloggers with distinct personalities in China, but beauty brands rarely use them, which may also be related to the direction of the general environment. In September last year, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television issued the "Notice on Further Strengthening the Management of Literary and Art Programs and Their Personnel" on its official website, requiring "establish a correct aesthetic orientation of programs, resolutely put an end to deformed aesthetics such as female cannons, and resolutely resist pan-entertainment tendencies such as hyping up wealth and pleasure, gossiping about privacy, negative hot spots, vulgar Internet celebrities, and bottomless trials." Although the notice is mainly aimed at literary and artistic programs, it has undoubtedly sounded the alarm for the brand: male beauty bloggers with strong makeup and out-of-character speeches are contrary to mainstream values and are not suitable as the brand's image representative and voice channel.
However, from the perspective of luxury brands, this situation is not the same as that of beauty brands, on the contrary, some luxury brands that have traditionally focused on the female market can leverage male consumers to obtain greater sales conversions and boost the market voice of brands. For example, Tiffany and Co. launched Yi Qianxi as the spokesperson for its Tiffany T series in 2020, and then promoted it to the global spokesperson of the brand; Cartier announced that Li is now the best friend of its brand last year; Tod's invited Xiao Zhan as the brand spokesperson last year, and then Xiao Zhan's items in the advertising materials were sold out in a short period of time. In addition, there are Chinese and foreign male stars such as Jing Bairan, Wang Yibo, Kwon Ji-lung, Brad Pitt and chanel who only own women's products to cooperate with brand ambassadors, close friends and advertising faces.
Yi Qianxi
Compared with beauty brands, the use of male spokespersons by luxury brands does not carry too much discussion about aesthetic values, gender orientation and so on. Because for a long time, luxury brands have been relatively blurred in terms of gender boundaries, although most of them are still mainly women, but thanks to the neutral design aesthetics that have existed in the fashion industry for a long time, the male gaze that has been gradually removed, and the accelerated layout of brands on men's products, the resistance of male celebrities to become the endorsement face of luxury brands will naturally not be as big as that of beauty brands or underwear brands.
Second, according to Jeffery's report, a new group of young male consumers are contributing incrementally to the U.S. luxury market. In the Chinese market, nearly a third of luxury sales are contributed by male consumers. Therefore, with the help of male spokespersons, luxury brands have actually completed the mental strategy of male consumers, and have expanded their main customer base to male consumers.
In the final analysis, the mechanism for brand spokespersons to play a role is emotional transplantation, which enhances the emotional connection with the target customer group by personalizing the brand spirit. In the context of millennials and Gen Z gradually taking over the baton as the core group of fashion consumption, if brands want to prevent aging and obsolescence, then whether they ultimately choose to hold hands with male celebrities or male bloggers, "young" seems to be an indispensable premise. WWD
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