Beauty gets bigger at creative agencies
In late March, Doneger Creative Services (DCS) relaunched its beauty insights and creative services offerings. To mark the occasion, the company presented its new Beauty Mark trends forecast for spring and summer 2017 to a select group of clients and industry insiders.
Sixty professionals (give or take) from across the personal care, cosmetics, and wellness industries took part, Jamie Ross, creative director at DCS, tells Cosmetics Design. They came from development, from R&D, packaging, marketing, and advertising.
The total package
Summarizing the company’s new approach to beauty, Ross calls it “a holistic, 360 degree approach to the industry – including industry directions, sociocultural drivers, color, messaging, formulations & ingredients, the overall look in keeping with fashion trends, packaging implications, hot items and application inspirations, product benchmarks and thought provoking development ideas.”
The inaugural Beauty Mark report comprises four overarching beauty trends and within each a spectrum of details that make it work:
- The Story (a quick description of the trend)
- Sociocultural Drivers (the cultural why behind the trend)
- Colors (shades and hues, which correspond to the trend)
- Messaging (the sorts of taglines and images that recommend the trend effectively)
- Formulation and ingredients (methods and ingredients worth foregrounding)
- The Look (how the trend fits in with fashion)
- Packaging Implications (textural inspirations and possible materials)
- Application Inspiration (images and descriptions that suggest the mood of the trend)
- Product Benchmarks (examples of brands leading the way and doing well)
- Development Questions (prompts, really, to spark ideas that fit the trend and the brand)
The company plans to generate a fresh, comprehensive Beauty Mark trends report twice each year. And in the intervening intervals, DCS updates their client-access-only site content almost daily with the latest insights and data, Michelle Rotbart, trend analyst for the firm, tells Cosmetics Design.
The bigger picture
Beyond the dynamic Beauty Mark report, the new DCS approach to beauty incorporates the wisdom, experience, creativity, and collaborative advantage of the firm’s team of analysts.
It’s also worth noting that the trends DCS reports and advises on for beauty overlap neatly with those that the company covers for apparel, accessories, and home. The spring and summer 2017 report, for instance, delves into trends called Serenity, Prism, Biotic, and Reformation—the same trends the company presented to brands in those other industries.
Consumers, it’s fair to say, don’t live fragmented lives. So having a widely informed view of the coming trends makes good sense.
