P&G Using Online Soap Opera To Market Beauty Products In China
By Kate Zhao, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- Procter & Gamble Co. (PG) has once again turned to the
soap opera genre to market its products, only this time the soap is online and
the characters are in China.
Max Factor, a beauty brand that P&G is discontinuing in the U.S., is playing a
central role in the firm's new marketing efforts in China. An online soap opera
made by P&G's beauty and grooming group and Beijing Hachette Advertising Co.
tells the story of two young, energetic professional women, Max Factor's target
consumers in the country. And, of course, the show's characters use only P&G
beauty products.
Foreign companies are increasingly using the Internet to reach their Chinese
consumers. Marketing tools such as corporate blogs and sponsorship on social Web
sites have been widely adopted by manufacturers of consumer products and
electronics. Sony Pictures Television, a unit of Sony Corp. (SNE), and Estee
Lauder Cos.'s (EL) Clinique, for example, have worked together to broadcast an
online show "Sufei's Diary" to plug Sony Vaio laptops and Clinique cosmetics.
By tapping the Internet, P&G hopes to boost sales of Max Factor and other
beauty brands like Olay and Pantene in China.
P&G wouldn't give numbers on its sales or advertising expenses in China since
the debut of its online shop at Taobao.com, a unit of Alibaba.com Ltd. (1688.HK)
, saying the program and the online shop are still in trial phases.
"New media means new lifestyle, so you are going to see more and more trials
in the future," said Feng Yan, an associate professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong
University. "Big advertisers [are beginning to] take advantage of [new media] to
reach their consumers."
P&G has woven product placements for Max Factor into the online show and
included interactive aspects and commercials for its other major brands,
including Pantene, Vidal Sassoon, and Head & Shoulders. In addition to its
online efforts, P&G has opened high-end Max Factor counters at department stores
in major cities, including Beijing and Shanghai.
The general soap opera format isn't new to P&G, which for years has used the
genre to reach women consumers in the U.S. However, using the Internet gives the
company the ability to allow its audience to interact and participate in the
program's development.
The 12-episode show is centered around the character of Xiang An, an editor at
a fashion magazine, who uses Olay skin care products every day, and her best
friend - Coco Bai, a makeup artist working at the same place. Viewers can argue
with each other through an online forum about Bai and An's opinions on love and
life, send text messages to guess the next episode's content to win free gifts,
or directly buy products online on Taobao.com.
Before the show's debut May 8, P&G primarily used TV commercials to target
Chinese consumers, and was the top bidder at the China Central Television prime
time slot auction from 2005 to 2007, according to Access Asia, an independent
market research company. Access Asia said P&G remained among the top bidders in
2009, spending $75.3 million at this year's auction, up 6% from 2008.
Young white-collar Chinese professionals between the ages of 25 to 35 - P&G's
target audience - typically spend only about an hour and a half each day
watching TV. However, the same group typically spends four hours online every
day and spent around $667 million for online shopping in the first quarter of
2009, according to iResearch Consulting Group.
The new show seems to have had some success. Between May 8 and June 5, each
episode attracted an average of one million viewers, according to Hachette
Advertising, adding that viewers sent in more than 50,000 text messages in less
than three weeks and that the show was the target of 32 million searches from
May 8 to May 31 on Baidu.com (BIDU), China's No. 1 search engine.
Hachette is currently working on the second season, which will change the show
into a more open-ended model, allowing audiences to change the plots of each
episode, said Mier Ai, managing director at Hachette Advertising.
Milton Kotler, president of Kotler Marketing Group Inc., a marketing
consultancy based in southern China's Shenzhen, says the continued success of
the new show will depend "on how creative they are," adding that embedded
commercials, if overused, could backfire and annoy the audience.
-By Kate Zhao, Dow Jones Newswire; 212-416-2665; ying.zhao@dowjones.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
06-17-091338ET
Copyright (c) 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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