Monday, November 27, 2006
Posted by Kevin Kells, Director of Google's CPG VerticalOn November 15th, the Google CPG Team hosted our first-ever Beauty Day Summit at the Cornelia Day Resort in New York City. Attended by over 50 beauty marketers and their agency partners, the event focused on the changing landscape for marketers and the desire to connect with passionate beauty consumers in new and different ways. As beauty marketers know, there are specific business and media issues facing brands in a piece-driven, innovation-heavy category. Namely, how do you efficiently get those consumers who are most interested in your category to raise their hands so that you can serve up the most relevant brand message to them, whether it be text, image or sight-sound-and-motion video?
Google speakers were followed by a highly engaging "beauty maven" panel led by author and blogger Tia Williams, former beauty director at Teen People. Panelists offered varying perspectives on representations of beauty as well as how they search for and engage with beauty products online. What was constant was their desire to tap into a passionate online community in order to constantly interact with other real women about beauty products -- from positive to negative experiences to everything in-between. They clearly brought to life that this passionate community is alive and well: top-cited activities include browsing blogs and beauty sites for product reviews, shopping online, and connecting with other beauty mavens for tips and trends. The panel talked about advertising too - what they like, dislike, and how they view and engage with beauty advertising online and offline. One piece of creative in particular was the subject of much discussion -- Dove's "Evolution" out of Ogilvy & Mather's Toronto office:
It's a great example of the engaging content some marketers are producing, and it certainly has a place online where women can experience and share it.
After that, everyone was welcome to test drive some of Google's newest products, including Google Trends, Mobile, Local/Coupons, Video, and Checkout. It was a great event, and we plan to hold many more category-specific discussions with our marketing partners in the coming months.
