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No Make-up Makeup: A Subversive Challenge to Beauty Standards

The Fair & Lovely case was deeply personal for me, because I grew up hearing “tsk tsk…how did you get so dark in America?” I moved from Beijing to LA when I was six, and my favorite activity was swimming in the pool of our apartment complex. According to my mom, this was how I “permanently became a dark child and never had the chance to be fair, ever again.” Even before I was exposed to the advertising that still targets East and Southeast Asian consumer today, I was already imbued with self-doubt about the color of my skin being undesirable.

Skin color, especially in America’s politicized landscape, is associated with all sorts of issues ranging from education and socioeconomic status to beauty and wealth. I identify as a person of color, not for the color of my skin but rather for my immigrant experience as a minority. Of course, my skin is also dark. Coming to accept and even celebrate my skin color was not an easy path, and given our political backdrop, the issue of skin color is indeed a thorny one.

How can we overcome the issue that Asian-American immigrants’ standard of beauty is still colonized by the white ideals of being fair? There are several approaches that the No Make-up Makeup (NMM) movement has successfully utilized. I was reminded of this movement today when I went to Sephora to pick up a new mascara by the latest NMM brand on the block, Merit. Appropriately, I will use Merit as the embodiment in the NMM movement.

Merit, like other NMM brands, emphasizes that every woman has unique features which should be elevated. There is no standard of beauty, and there is definitely no standard for beautiful skin tone, as communicated by their many shades of foundation and diverse models. However, what consumers values and social identity are the appealing to? I believe that the value and identity piece reside within people’s yearning for equality. Merit is, on the surface, not a political brand. But below the surface the brand is a little subversive; by eliminating any standards and truly embracing all skin tones and types, they are standing up for equality among people regardless of their background. This arguably appeals to people like myself who hold deep values around not just social equality, but also social equity. By appealing to these deep-rooted beliefs, brands like Merit can get into the heads of consumers and help them prioritize enhancing their own skin color instead of changing it.

Tying Merit to the article by Banker, Gosline and Lee, I believe that the placebo effect holds strong for beauty brands, in contrast to brands that require cerebral engagement. In fact, the placebo effect might hold even stronger for NMM beauty brands because these brands claim to be minimalistic makeup that bring out your best features. Because their makeup effect is so subtle, consumers really rely on the placebo effect to believe that the NMM actually works and make them look like the better version of themselves. I’d be curious to hear from other classmates who want to discuss the NMM movement and placebo effects!

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Innovation Diffusion: Two Additional Criteria & Assessment

After reading Roger’s five factors, there were two factors that were immediately missing from my perspective. First, there is the Policy* factor – the extent to which the product is supported by a favorable regulatory environment. This is essential for innovations like electric vehicles and alternative protein, which are embedded within larger policies for decarbonization and the energy transition and for food safety. Second, there is the Scalability* factor – the degree to which a product is easily manufactured and accessible by the mass market.

Below, I meticulously evaluate the four products according to the seven criteria and conclude that PB Slices, the collapsible wheel, and Stave puzzles will not reach market potential rapidly. All three confer low- to medium- relative advantage and have issues with scaling either due to their price barrier or due to compatibility with public values. These products will not diffuse easily no matter how flashy or innovative they might be.

Meanwhile, Polytrack seems the most promising for reaching market potential fast. Its synthetic track has three huge relative advantages over sand-based tracks. (1) It is water repellent and speeds up the drying of the track, which enables more races during the winter and higher profit for racing courses. (2) It creates a cushioned surface for horses and helps them avoid injuries and recover faster. (3) Riders feel and are safer too.

My learnings apply to my branding lab project in that we are repositioning our smart glasses, Solos AirGo 2.0, for the U.S. market. For this wearable to take off, proving relative advantage is the first hurdle. The glasses combine into one product the features of several different devices: Bluetooth headset, AI trainer, mobile phone, and regular glasses. We must prove that the investment in AirGo 2.0 is better than having any of these items separately. Consumers who are interested in the glasses most likely own the individual items, so in addition to proving our advantage we must prove compatibility and simplicity. Compatibility will come in the form of appealing to values around mental and physical health. Simplicity will be tied to trialability, perhaps by enabling a generous try-and-return program that Warby Parker has.

- Steward Kennedy, the inventor of PB slices, cites convenience as the primary advantage of his product. However, Roger describes that this advantage is derived from cost reduction and/or greater productivity / efficacy. While convenience could fall under the latter category, it seems pretty week as the only benefit conferred.

- The product should be scalable, assuming they have the extrusion technology. However, three years of R&D and still no product is not promising.

- With compatibility, there are values such as sustainability and enjoyment of experiences that this product runs counter to with its focus on plastic-wrapped individual slices. Furthermore, with the strong trends in food pointing to natural and whole, this product can be perceived as synthetic.

- Simplicity: the only high rating I give this product is that it is not complex.

- Single wraps make this product triable, but few things after COVID-19 are triable in store.

- The product is not observable as it’s meant to be incorporated into other foods.

- From a policy perspective, this product also rates low because its initial wax ingredient was not approved!

- At first blush this product things to confer advantages, but there are also disadvantages. How (in)convenient is it to collapse the wheel and furthermore carry the heavy object on you, as opposed to locking up the bike? What if a component breaks – can the average bike shop even fix it?

- The new wheel design on a bike costs between $2K-$6K. This probably means there are manufacturing complexities that present an issue for scaling. Then this becomes a chicken-egg problem: without adequate demand, you can’t get the investment to produce at scale. Without production at scale, you can’t make product accessible.

- People value convenience and mobility, but is this product’s cost worth those values? The wheel faces competition not just from traditional bikes but also from the shared mobility space like Uber and Lyft scooters, and blue bikes.

- So, how complex is this product? I watched a video of Tuck Bike’s product “The first folding bike with folding wheels” and it seems pretty unwieldy. You have to go through many steps to fold up the components. After, it’s still heavy and you must drag it…

- The product might be triable as normal bikes are in retailers that carry it.

- Observability: the only high rating I give is that you can’t miss seeing this weird bike out in the public!

- From a policy angle, there is no particular support or impediment for the product assuming that it passes product safety tests.

- To understand what the Stave Puzzles were, I first had to watch their promo video. From my understanding, the relative advantage of the puzzles is that they offer cerebral and tactile stimulus in a novel format. However, their advantage differs depending on what you compare them to. Compared to flat jigsaw puzzles they seem more fun. But compared to other physical brain teasers which are also tactile, they don’t confer much advantage. That’s why I rated this medium.

- The puzzles are handmade in Vermont by people who take six months to train. A puzzle costs around half a grand on average. This product is not scalable nor accessible to the average person.

- Compatibility: this is the only high rating I gave, because the puzzle does appeal to a lot of the consumer trends. It enables people to unplug from digital, enjoy multi-sensorial experiences, engage in a social activity.

- Based on customer reviews, the puzzles are complex enough that they invoke a love-hate relationship. Due to their difficulty they only appeal to a certain type of brainiac.

- Since the puzzles are very expensive and only made in a workshop in Vermont, they are not very triable.

- Thanks to online video, however, people can “try” on the puzzles with their eyes by observing how they are made and the process of piecing them together.

- Policy has no impact on this product.

- Polytrack confers several substantial advantages of traditional sand-based tracks. (1) It is water repellent and speeds up the drying of the track, which enables more races during the winter and higher profit for racing courses. (2) It creates a cushioned surface for horses and helps them avoid injuries and recover faster. (3) Riders feel and are safer too. Therefore, relative advantage ranks high.

- The Polytrack material seems easy enough to make at scale that it has been brought into at least two turfs tracks in the article.

- From a values perspective, the ability of Polytrack to help racing courses turn a higher profit and maintain the health of horses and racers aligns well with all major stakeholders.

- The product is not complex; it’s a construction substitute for traditional turf material.

- In terms of trialability, Polytrack manages well because people can check out its application on the racing courses which have adopted it. However, this depends on the accessibility of the race site.

- Polytrack is not an observable material, but in this rare instance it is desired because racing courses don’t really want their audiences to know that the course has been altered.

- Policy doesn’t impact this product.

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Wine with Chinese Food

What’s the similarity between Chilean wine and Chinese-American food? Both are known for their “value for money” and have a hard time moving up their sectors’ premium ladder (wine and restaurant, respectively). The barriers to their “upward mobility” are due to historical constraints and stubborn consumer perceptions. Chile, as the Concha y Toro case explained, has had a relatively peaceful but unremarkable history after the reign of their dictator Pinochet. The country is a reliable exporter of commodities, but is not really known for anything; hence, its wines are “safe but boring.” Chinese-American food and its history go back to the time of the mass migrations from coastal Chinese cities to the American coasts, beginning with the Gold Rush in the 1850s. Chinese immigrants faced intense hardship, as scholars and doctors were forced into basic services like laundry, cleaning, and mining. Among the fortunate immigrants who paid off their debt and saved up the capital, many opened Chinese restaurants. As American attitude towards Chinese immigrants was hostile, racism impeded their patronage of these restaurants. Chinese food was slandered as odorous and savage, and restauranteurs had to lower prices to attract customers, which did not help with the perception of their food. It wasn’t until the early 1900s that Chinese restaurants began adapting their cuisine to American palates and earned their keep.

Today, the image of China is changing. As the Chinese economy rises, products are no longer “made in China,” Chinese consumers have more spending power, and goods from China including its food are no longer perceived as “cheap” by default. Let’s tie this back to the case; for wine, the perception and expectations for the quality of wine are inextricably linked to their country. Unless the Chilean government itself launches a rebranding campaign for their country, the fortunes of Concha y Toro are tied to Chile. At the end of the case, Concha y Toro has two options: leave the lower end and pursue premium pricing or double down in the basic segment. I think it will be really hard for the brand to pursue the former strategy unless they put a lot of marketing dollars (perhaps uniting with Chilean wine associations) into educating global consumers on the unique terroir, soil, and microclimate conditions of Chile where wine is grown. There could also be a unique sustainability angle that appeals to the higher-income consumers who can afford to spend on green issues. In contrast, Concha y Toro should double down in being known for “value for dollar” and appeal to the Millennial generation who are known for being a bit broke. My generation, by necessity of our economic circumstances, desire high-value goods that give a bang for each buck spent.

https://wokkingontherun.blogspot.com/2012/09/chinese-food-wine-pairings.html

Now, I want to spend a brief moment on the title for my post. After I read the sensory expectations study, I began recounting how often Chinese restaurants offer wine on their menu. The answer is…Rarely. However, if I think about the few upscale, Western-fusion Chinese restaurants I’ve been to, good wine is often on the menu. It’s on a separate small menu that you see before the courses menu. So, have savvy Chinese restauranteurs known that offering expensive wine is the way to elevate their cuisine?

Relating this week’s readings to my group’s project, we are positioning smart glasses co-founded by teammate Ken Fan (Solos AirGo 2.0) for their summer launch. One nudge that I think we should try is to use social proof to build excitement for the product. We can roll out Instagram advertisements that boast the call-to-action for people to tag their friends to receive a discount code when the product launches. When their friend sees the product, they can likewise tag others and help us propagate the promotion. Part of the call-to-action with tagging friends can be to have them add a hashtag like #EarlybirdAirGo to track the usage of the hashtag over a certain period of time. This can help us measure how well the nudge has worked to incite tagging and excitement.

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Consumer Behavior Online: (Omni)Channel Triaging and Social Shopping

The article by Soman, Kim, and An on how the digital shopping experience has changed (compared to the in-store experience) was fascinating and brought back memories of one of my favorite projects on the Future of How People Shop. The mandate of the project was to help my client understand how the consumer decision journey “CDJ” has evolved since McKinsey updated its famous CDJ framework in 2015 (below), and to propose new insights that substantiated, elaborated upon, or countered the framework. In this post, I bold the words and phrases that are concepts from the reading.

Image credit: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-new-consumer-decision-journey

The new CDJ “The accelerated loyalty journey,” that McKinsey proposes derives from the advantage of online shopping, one-click purchasing, personalization algorithms, and fiercer competition among brands for consumer headspace. Due to these trends, companies are now able to short-circuit two key phases of the original CDJ: “Consider” and “Evaluate.” Thus, companies are taking advantage of consumers’ heuristics and mental shortcuts to push consumers from the “Awareness” phase directly to the “Buy” phase.

However, through my research, I landed on a key insight that counters McKinsey’s new model and proposal. I found, through expert interviews and a custom survey, that the omnichannel nature of shopping has actually extended the “Consider” and “Evaluate” phases. Armed with mobile phones, consumers are savvier than ever before and more inclined to invest time in research. This leads to two outcomes: (1) (omni)channel triaging and (2) social shopping, which I describe in detail below.

Image credit: https://veloxity.us/commercial-cell-phone-charging-stations-for-retail-stores/

(OMNI)CHANNEL TRIAGING: This is a term that I made up, which refers to the consumer behavior of comparing prices of a product in-store with prices they find online. Think about it: when was the last time you were in a store agonizing over a purchase because it was outside of your budget, and then did a quick search on your smartphone for a lower-priced deal or for a comparable substitute? Channel triaging! Consumers are able to take advantage of offline and online image displays to have instantaneous side-by-side comparisons, a sort of aggregate market preference for pricing. The nuance to channel triaging, however, is that the behavior is more prevalent for products that are expensive, such as technology. For mundane, affordable goods like toothpaste, consumers are not willing to spend the time for the potential cost savings. This also speaks to the impatience element of purchasing described by Soman, Kim, and An. Because of channel triaging, retailers like Best Buy have a “Lowest Price Guaranteed” scheme in which they will match their price with the lowest price that you find for a product, offered by a legitimate retailer. Here, BB offers a strategic choice architecture for consumers (“context-dependent choice” described in the article) to retain their purchase at BB’s location, instead of at a competitor’s location.

Image credit: https://www.business2community.com/instagram/how-to-use-instagram-to-drive-sales-like-a-marketer-02222011

SOCIAL SHOPPING: With the advent of highly visual social media (e.g. Instagram, Snap, Pinterest), consumers are now blending the “Consider” and “Evaluate” phases of research with the “Buy” phase. If you have not participated in social shopping before, imagine this: You are scrolling through your favorite fashion influencer’s Insta feed and see that they’ve done a collaboration with the sustainable shoe brand, Rothy’s. You tap the shoe and purchase the exact same pair, all within the Insta platform. That’s social shopping. I was surprised that the article did not discuss social shopping, since it incorporates a few concepts like peer influence (the admiration you have for the influencer spills over to Rothy’s), heuristics (the influencer has already “curated” the shoe decision for you, giving you a cognitive shortcut), and visual bias (the influencer’s post is aesthetically compelling and draws you into the purchase). And due to the connectivity effect, when you tap on this post, you get a lot more information by viewing all the comments and emojis supporting the post, sometimes even enjoying real-time review of the product itself. Companies and brands that leverage social shopping can turn the online purchasing decision into a conversation. They will have a lot of traction with digitally engaged consumers, especially when they are notin a purchasing mindset.

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Intel Inside - Computing, not Computers

“We need to be thinking about computing, which can encompass any number of different devices.” This is my favorite line from the case, because it captures a lot of the internal struggles I saw companies go through as my consulting clients. In my old job as a foresight strategist, I helped companies envision and set resources against where they wanted to be in 7-10+ years from today. For a car client, it was helping them make the mental leap from automobiles to mobility. For a tech client, it was helping them shift from technology to connectivity. For Intel, it’s making the shift from computers to computing, which is the question at the end of the case. Should they extend their chips to non-PC applications? I think they should and provide some thoughts for conversation here. (Spoiler alert: I googled “Intel chip smartphones” and have found out that they missed the mobile train. Would love to discuss with classmates why!)

1. Intel could expand to non-PCs through Intel Inside because the umbrella brand is broad enough. The original campaign was created to house multiple generations of products and help make clear to customers differences between products (based on the insight that end users weren’t aware). Their co-op advertising program was brilliant (and continues to live today under the Intel Inside Program Associate Membership), providing strong incentives for their OEM partners to cast them in the best light. Intel’s problem at the end of the case is that they’re afraid of brand dilution, because their two top brand attributes of Safety (reliability) and Leading tech have been so closely tied to computers. (Black & Decker had a similar problem with brand dilution after they expanded product line outside of heavy-duty power tools to home gadgets after the acquisition of GE’s household goods division. The dilution led to very low sales among tradesmen, a key segment for B&D, because they perceived B&D to be too “homey.” The fear of dilution is valid!) However, the attributes of Safety and Leading tech are also incredibly important for mobile phones, which I’ve heard many people describe as a “mini computer in your pocket.” Intel could have collaborated with a current customer who also manufactures mobile phones (e.g. Microsoft) to articulate how they are using the power of their chip to make phones as fast and high-performing as computers. Intel’s messages around innovation could be heavily applied to the phone market, helping consumers understand that they’re taking us into the future by liberating us from large, bulky computers for our daily computing needs. And Intel can do this because its technology is truly superior, backed up by the double cycles for R&D. Questions leading off of this is: what type of market research did Intel conduct to understand the appetite among core customers (IT heads and CTOs) and potential customers (everyday consumers) for their chip in mobile phones? What were the findings? In response, how did their B2B communication and branding strategy for IT heads need to change for B2C communication to consumers? Although Intel missed the mobile market, they seem intent to NOT miss the next big wave: Internet-of-Things and smart homes.

I think that IoT creates the PERFECT opportunity for Intel to leverage its Intel Inside branding to help consumers understand the reliability of their chips in powering connected devices. For many consumers, IoT is a black box, the hardware and software are relatively new, and there are concerns about privacy and data protection. If Intel can demonstrate how its technology seamlessly connects multiple devices to create a more modern, comfortable, secure - and of course, intelligent - home experience, then they can capture market share in partnership with key players like LG and Phillips. 2. Another reason I believe that Intel could have capture the mobile market is that their marketing team (lead by the likes of Ann Lewnes) was visionary and knew the importance of capturing consumer HEARTS, not just their minds. I actually watched the 1992 “Star Wars” advertising where you travel inside the computer and reacted very viscerally. It was cool, but also kind of creepy. It was technical, but not technical enough for me to understand what was special about their chip. In contrast, I loved their Blue Man group advertisement for the Pentium 4 processor.

This was fun, quirky, unexpected, and most important - innovative and human. Intel’s marketing team held their ground against criticism to the Blue Man group, which signaled to me that they would continue on this insight that creative campaigns must connect emotionally. And...I’m pretty certain that Apple was inspired by Intel’s ads and took a page from their emotional advertisement playbook to create their own ads which are centered around limitless creativity and bringing people together. I’ve cried during an Apple ad before. :)

With ads like these, Intel was building an emotional connection to customers by showing them that Intel’s products can help unleash they creativity and innovation. This emotional connection is arguably more valuable to build for the mobile phone market than for PCs, because of the small and by-your-side nature of phones and the fact that their primary function is to connect us to other people. Now that Intel is entering people’s smart homes through their smart ovens, smart microwaves, smart toilets, smart speakers, etc., I am curious to understand how they will maintain the emotional side of their products to connect with customers. What are your thoughts?