Personal care for men used to start with shampoo and a shave, and end with deodorant and a splash of cologne. Not anymore. "In the past three years, the growth in the male face care segment of the market has more than doubled," says Pimjan Vimktanonda, senior brand manager in Asia for Beiersdorf, makers of the Nivea For Men range. "The face care market for men in Asia is three times that of Europe."
Most skincare brands that have traditionally catered to women now have a men's range, among them The Body Shop, Lancome, Clarins, Clinique and Neutrogena. Some have given their products masculine names — fatigue fighter, skin scruffer, razor defence — and blokey packaging, but the bottom line is that for men, cleansing, toning and moisturising are no longer dirty words. "Men tend to be influenced by women, but now they're getting a bit more comfortable buying these things for themselves," she says.
Vimktanonda says there are three geographic clusters in Asia defining men's attitudes to personal care products. The most developed countries like Korea and Thailand are where men ask their girlfriends, wives, mums and sisters about what they use, and take their advice. Facial cleansers are big sellers here. In slightly less liberated markets, such as China — where moisturiser for men is a hit — Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and the Philippines, men are that bit less comfortable with shopping for these products for themselves. In Indonesia and India, it's more of a struggle to get men to look beyond a razor.
Around the region, though, Nivea for Men uses consistent marketing messages, depicting 'friendly, authentic' men and their admiring women. "We portray male beauty, but we make sure communications are masculine," says Vimktanonda. "We would never go for the 'macho man' thing, not like Gillette. It's different territory."
Gillette has its own men's face care line, and urges male consumers to 'face skincare like a man'. The most recognisable Gillette face is David Beckham. David Mayo, Ogilvy & Mather Asia-Pacific VP, says the masculine Gillette man has endured because he works. "I think men like male stereotypes," he says, "almost as much as women don't like female stereotypes".
The use of David Beckham is significant, though. "He's a peculiar blend," Mayo says. "On the one side, he's having his chest waxed and wears a diamond earring; and on the other, he's a complete lad." All men may have been created equal, but what they become — and what convinces them to buy — can be very different. Portable gadgetry, for instance, is as much about showing off an ability to buy the latest and greatest as about actually buying the product that best suits their needs. Mark Ryan, MindShare Firefly CEO, Asia-Pacific, says this applies especially to mobile phones. "Women are more into aesthetics. Men are, too, but they're also interested in the functionality — not from the point of view of actually using it, but they want to be able to say 'I've got a three-megapixel camera in my phone'," he says. "Ask them how often they actually use it and they say, 'Well, hardly ever', but Asian men tend to be quite acquisitive in terms of prestige brands, and mobile phones are part of that. Generally, men in Asia perceive change and progress as synonymous, and they want to feel that they're at the edge of it. If they're buying a new electronic item or replacing one, they want to feel that they're trading up."
In marketing to these men, though, Ryan says brands don't have to present a lot of detail about product spec to win them over; if the list of features is long rather than short, that's about all that's needed. "Often, it's just about volume (of features)," he says, "although men do tend to keep up with what the going rate is for things like megapixels."
Where they do pay more attention to product spec is when it comes to less visible electronics items for the home, like DVD players and televisions, where the opinion of workmates matters less than what a man actually wants to use them for.
But, of course, not all Asian men appreciate the same thing in advertising. Millward Brown China MD Rana Deepender recalls an ad for a flat-screen TV that was simultaneously tested in five regional markets. "It was supposed to be a funny ad, with a deep emotional connection," he says. "Australia got it and was totally focused on the connection; Thailand also got it. But the people in India, Vietnam and China totally missed the point.
"Instead they started focusing on the product itself — its size, and where it was — which partly just reflects the fact that an LCD TV is still a big deal in these markets, but also that they tend to be very product-focused."
This means that clients wanting to use an ad across several markets need to provide several messages simultaneously — one for each kind of male consumer. "Clients are coming up with back-up strategies," Deepender says. "If someone's going to miss the funny part, you have to look at what they'll then take away from the ad and have a back-up message there."
Cars, meanwhile, have always been the best badge of status for men that money can buy. But what men want out of a car isn't always as obvious as it might seem; even if their need for transport and their budget is the same, men in different Asian markets use and think about cars differently, and that determines the kind of marketing that works for them. Bates China ECD Norman Tan says the highly successful 'King Kong' ad by Ford in Thailand is a great example of how different men in the car market can be. The ad mocks the macho man stereotype. "That kind of ad would never be able to sell in China," he says. "In China, it's still the stereotype about the man's success, you achieve, you believe you can really fly... Chinese don't know how to laugh at themselves."
The latest ABRS study of affluent Asian men's buying habits found that very few men in the market for a new car cared as much about what was under the bonnet as they did about design. Deepender says in many Asian cities — where the men who can afford to buy a car are — the idea of testing whether it really can do nought to 100 in that many seconds is alien. "If you look at the really rich people in somewhere like China, they're not into it for the pleasure of driving, so a lot of cars have made the rear seats more comfortable, with more leg room, because that's where the owner sits. The driver's seat is for the chauffeur."
Hiroshi Hirada, global account director for Toyota with Dentsu Singapore, says men are becoming more open to the kind of advertising that traditionally has been made for markets other than their own. That said, however, there are some rules of thumb: "Men in mainland China like advertising with a strong and clearly expressed message, Singaporeans prefer humour, men in Hong Kong like to see style, Japanese and Thai men have a strong preference for ads featuring beautiful ladies and TV stars, and Filipinos like ads with a strong influence from the US," he says.
There's also the general Asian preference for conformity to consider, and a reluctance to stand out for more practical reasons in the Philippines or China, where a too-flash set of wheels makes a man a kidnapping target. For an international brand like Toyota, then, coming up with a consistent message for the region that can be tweaked at the local level is quite a task. "We often use symbols of power, like nature, or a sound, and the main character must be intelligent-looking and attractive," Hirada says.
When it comes to beer, wine and spirits, it's not just the male mind that marketers have to contend with, but also differences in legal restrictions. For Foster's beer, for instance, capturing the Indian market has meant working around a ban on alcohol advertising and taking account of the fact that international beer brands are premium, luxury products.
Aine Friel, Foster's Brewing International's communications manager, says that instead of the broad-reach advertising used in most markets, Foster's has used influence marketing, sponsoring events that engage key opinion leaders and generate extensive PR and media coverage. "Our exploitation of cricket is a good example. We sponsor cricket celebrities and arrange events where key consumer influencers can interact with celebrities to generate PR — like a barbecue with Shane Warne, where key target media line up and bat against him."
For premium-brand spirits, Diageo regional marketing development manager Ajay Asrani says global campaigns such as Johnnie Walker's 'Keep walking' have to be tailored to local markets. In China, the brand focuses on the status of Johnnie Walker itself and the overt virtues of success. In Thailand, it's more subtle, an expression of how giving back to society is a measure of success. "We've responded to a shift from aspiration to identification. While celebrities may be aspirational, it can be difficult for consumers to relate to them on a personal level.
"To encourage people to do it for themselves, we have more recently featured non-celebrity talent who are everyday characters yet still dynamic and on their way up. This taps into the fact that our audience is becoming increasingly confident and want to engage with brands at a deeper level."
The modern Asian man, then, has to juggle his traditional challenges — carving out a successful career, earning his parents' approval and providing for his own family. This in addition to being able to express himself... and have radiant skin.
