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Beauty product makers turn to young women

At US$2,100 for a three-week supply, the Essence, from Creme de la Mer, is the world's most expensive face lotion. Over-the-counter beauty products promising youthful skin have topped the US$1,000 mark. PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE

Baby boomers are so last century.

At least that is how a lot of the skin care companies see it. There may be tens of millions of baby boomers out there craving to renew their skin's youthful glow, but their children collectively represent an even bigger market for skin care regimens, and they will be spending on skin care for many decades to come.

Clinique is repositioning its long-standing three-step routine squarely at college students. Avon is aggressively pushing Mark., a line of beauty and fashion items aimed at 17 to 24-year-olds. Lancome is selling Juicy Tubes, lip glosses aimed at teenagers, and in Britain, a new company called Young and Pure is marketing all-natural face and hair products to girls as young as 10.

"The cosmetics people are realizing that young people have plenty of money that they are perfectly willing to spend on lip glosses and creams," said Allan Mottus, a consultant to the beauty industry and publisher of the Informationist, a trade publication. "Now they are trying to figure out better ways to reach them."

Not everyone is hopping on board, of course. Novartis, which acquired Keri Lotion from Bristol-Myers Squibb in 2005, centered a new advertising campaign in the fall on the theme of "timeless beauty," and has a package redesign in the works for this year.

But research shows that Keri Lotion has always had the strongest appeal among consumers who are 35 and older and that is the age group that Novartis will continue to focus on.

Few if any companies are actually abandoning the older crowd -- anti-aging creams are big sellers. But increasingly, cosmetics companies are running parallel campaigns aimed at younger customers.

"Our core customer is still 38 to 50, but we no longer think of the under-38s as fringe customers," said Elizabeth Park, executive vice president of global marketing for Elizabeth Arden US.

Similarly, Avon sees Mark. as an add-on, not a replacement for other lines.

"Our interest in boomers hasn't diminished, but we do realize that this younger generation is concerned about skin care at a much earlier age," said Claudia Poccia, president for US Beauty for the Mark. line.

The problem, the industry discovered, is that the post-pimple crowd is pretty elusive. Young women are far less likely to shop in department stores than their mothers were. And department store cosmetics counters, with their fashionable consultants always ready to suggest products, have long been the retail venue of choice for introducing all but the cheapest products.

So the companies are looking for new ways to bring those younger consumers in.

The three-step program -- exfoliate, tone, moisturize -- has been Clinique's cornerstone product for almost 40 years. That skin care regimen can combat aging, but it can also combat oily skin.

Last year, Clinique, which had been devoting about 90 percent of its advertising budget to magazines and newspapers rarely read by those in their teens and 20s, began to advertise on MTV and other TV shows aimed at a younger audience. It took its message to Web sites like Facebook. And it began demonstrating the three-step product on college campuses.

Sales of the three-step product jumped almost 10 percent last year, "and I really believe it is business from new young users, not just incremental sales from our longtime customers," said Lynne Greene, president of Clinique.

This year, less than 50 percent of the budget will go to print.

Arden has changed its ways, too. It is advertising its new Intervene Pause & Effect moisturizer in InStyle, Allure and other magazines that skew young.

And it has also introduced a new three-in-one cleanser, for which it has mounted an e-mail and Web campaign aimed at women in their mid-20s "who are really just getting interested in skin care," Park said.

The companies have been fine-tuning the products and packaging as well. Arden's new cleanser is free of fragrance because Arden's research showed that young women do not like scented skin products. Avon, meanwhile, has introduced the Hook Up Connector, a product that lets customers snap together a mascara, lipstick or other cosmetic.

Later this year it plans to introduce a small multi-product compact that women can load up with different products every day.
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