Sell makeup to male soldiers.
This product is contradictory on so many levels it’s difficult to pick where to start. First off, why would a soldier wear makeup? Looking beautiful isn’t necessarily part of their core competence. Secondly, why would men buy this stuff? Korean men are just as stupid as any other men and so we don’t spend money on things that makes us better human beings.
So how on God’s green earth did this contradictory product help launch a 1+ billion USD male cosmetics industry in South Korea? The article below reports on its existence but doesn’t venture into why it may have happened.
Let me give you my two cents by explaining how a cosmetics company solved the two issues in a brilliant way.
The story start in 2010 with a company called Innisfree that launched the following product. Its camouflage creme with sunblock.
All able bodied Korean men must serve in the military for about 2 years. Anyone who’s ever had to put on military grade camo creme will testify that it’s really difficult to wash off. But this isn’t to say that the product is deficient. Quite the contrary. Soldiers wouldn’t want it to come off due to sweat and rain in the heat of battle right?
But what if it’s just for training?
Countless Korean men hate this stuff because it’s so difficult to wash off after training. It certainly doesn’t help that the sun bakes our skin during the day and so it’s really quite agonizing cometh night time.
Innisfree recognized this need and made good camo creme that looked exactly the same but was easier to wash off with special soap. It also doubled as a sun block.
So now we arrive at the second issue. Men are stupid and wouldn’t buy this stuff even though it makes perfect sense to do so. So how did Innisfree overcome this barrier? They didn’t have to.
There is a long standing tradition of throwing a party for our male youngsters before they enter bootcamp. What follows is usually a set of gifts given by loved ones such as letters or practical items such as strong wrist watches. This product made for the perfect gift for the mom/older sister/girlfriend who cared deeply about their respective male subjects. Plus the product itself had kind of a quirky element to it which made for very efficient viral marketing and so it quickly caught on. Nowadays, the highest paid Korean celebrities market this stuff.
This product was very strategically important for the same reason Apple/Microsoft/Google want to get their operating systems into the hands of students even at an economic loss. The reason being that those kids will grow accustomed to their products and will be their default choice when there is a choice to be made.
Applying this type of makeup is one of the first kinds that kids get to experience when young. But the fact that it’s an entry point is precisely the reason it’s so powerful. All cosmetics companies bundle different kinds of male cosmetics and don’t even worry about marketing it to men because it’s the women that buy them for men that primarily drive sales. As a by-product, men become conditioned into a default choice of cosmetics brand when and if they are in a position to choose.
This article is own by :
Sky Chon, A professional Korean geek
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