The Cougar Skin cosmetics range: Cynical branding or simply clever marketing?
Cosmetic company Rodial has a habit of pushing the boundaries with its upmarket skincare range. However the imminent launch of Cougar Skin, a skincare range aimed at menopausal women, seems to be pushing all the wrong buttons.
The Cougar Skin range
Respected beauty writers such as Sali Hughes have labelled the company cynical and exploitative for producing a line that plays to the insulting stereotype of sexually aggressive older women chasing toy boys. Others have piled in equally uncharitably.
As a man, I’d do well to tread lightly here. But as a marketer I have to say that I don’t think Rodial deserves the brickbats it is getting.
There is a long line of products that humorously play with the language that women use when talking about beauty and self-image. Think about Grumpy Cow from Cowshed or Fat Girl Slim by Bliss. None of these quirky products are offensive and their consumers recognise this, otherwise you wouldn’t find them on shelves. If they didn’t find an audience, retailers would pretty soon delist them.
Some might feel that retailers shouldn’t stock certain products. Rodial’s Size Zero caught a lot of flack for apparently celebrating an unattainable body image which resulted in calls for retailers to boycott it. But do we really want retailers to make that choice for us?
Given its provocative naming policy, it would be easy to write off Rodial simply as a scandal monger, but I’d like to think that there is a more intelligent process behind the headline-grabbing antics. Why would Rodial pick a name that has obviously turned some people straight off? That’s not clever, but whatever you think of the company, its success proves that it is getting something right.
The old model of marketing based on broad demographic groups such as 35-55 year old women is redundant. Such groupings were handy for marketers, but do any of us really identify with them as individuals?
Today’s markets are about self-selection and micro segmentation. Smart marketers zero in on consumer desires and come up with products that feed them. It links with the trend for ‘massclusivity’ where mass market products are given a premium makeover to create the appearance of greater personalisation. Coke’s Share a Bottle with hundreds of individualised bottles is a good example, and you can choose from two million combinations when you buy a new Mini.
Seen through this lens, Cougar Skin makes sense. It won’t be for everyone – it’s not a P&G product after all – but those who buy into its premise will probably love it. Given that the average age of a menopausal woman is 51, some women will be quite flattered by the term ‘cougar’, given its implications of youth and attractiveness.
It has a typical challenger brand mentality and by lobbing a hand grenade in it can make a big noise to challenge the status quo. It probably doesn’t have budgets to match the big players in the sector, so it has to achieve cut through with a different tone of voice. It’s a similar approach to breast cancer charity Coppafeel and it could achieve cult status by doing do.
Some might label Cougar Skin with the term ‘MILF’– marketing I’d like to forget. But I think it’s a bit smarter than that.
Ian Humphris is joint MD at Life