Coty perfume courts Japan's bloggers

The fragrance, Nikos Sculpture Delicate Fleur, is positioned as a light, inexpensive summer perfume for young women in their twenties.

Forgoing the conventional TV and print campaign common to the unveiling of cosmetics products in Japan, the firm worked with G2 Tokyo, Grey Group’s below-the-line network, to develop a media launch party at a prestigious venue in Tokyo’s fashionable Aoyama district that featured model Maryjun Takahashi and popular singer Daigo.

The agency invited a number of what it defined as ‘alpha bloggers’ within the beauty sector to attend the event and sample the product to generate nationwide publicity for the brand.

Chris Beaumont, president and chief executive of Grey Group Japan, explained that Coty would continue to focus on online marketing and e-commerce in the Japanese market in view of the habits of its target consumers. “The economics of department stores don’t lend themselves to this audience,” he said.

He noted that there was an increasing amount of attention devoted to the online space by young female consumers looking for new product recommendations.

Beaumont explained that perfume was not yet a major sector in Japan, where artificial scent has traditionally been regarded as distasteful, particularly among women. But describing the sector as “transient”, he added that the younger generation was keen to experiment with unobtrusive fragrances.

The world’s largest manufacturer of mass-market fragrances, Coty is privately owned by Joh A Benckiser GmbH, a German holding company. It competes primarily with global consumer goods giants such as L’Oréal, Procter & Gamble, Revlon and Unilever.

The company recently revealed that it was searching for models to endorse its brands in Asia, after retaining Kate Moss as the face for key brand Rimmel London. The latter recently launched in China and Japan.