Social Media the Focus at Fragrance Foundation UK Event

Beauty market research and insight company Mymarketmonitor.com recently gave an exclusive presentation to members of The Fragrance Foundation on Tuesday, March 1 at the Hotel Intercontinental in London, talking about the ins and outs of social media, as well as the opportunities and pitfalls in print advertising and editorial.

In his presentation, Sean Smith, operations director at Mymarketmonitor.com, discussed the social media landscape and also gave pointers on listening and engaging with consumers. With the global social media population now estimated at 1.3 billion, Smith stressed the importance keeping a close watch on all social media to keep ahead of the game. For fragrance, a key learn was that it is consumers themselves who influence other consumers through forums, tweets and networking sites. In the UK, it is being driven by the beauty blogs, with 46% of UK social media beauty discussion driven by the British blogger community.

Smith comments, “When we launched Mymarketmonitor.com online last year, there were under 100 UK beauty bloggers. Within the year it has doubled in sized, and we have [worked to identify] the most influential to allow the industry to build effective relationships with this vital target audience.”

Mymarketmonitor.com CEO Mike Ramseyer then discussed beauty print marketing in 2010 versus 2009. The industry saw all beauty press ad spend is up by 11%, and fragrance ad spending is up by 8% with male fragrances returning a significant 15.1% uplift in 2010. Good news for advertising as it equates to a £1.7 million increase in spend, at rate card. All beauty editorial pages are also up by 6.5%, and fragrance again is in step with the market, enjoying a 6% uplift. However, a cautionary note also was delivered about how the cosmetics category could still overshadow fragrance and that the industry must continue to drive its progressive print marketing strategy, integrated with a clear social media message.

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