Do beautiful women or celebrities ‘sell’ in personal care/beauty advertising? Do we ‘hate them because they are beautiful?’ Or, do we prefer their beauty to the plainer ‘real woman’ ads that have been such a popular trend? What about those boring product ads? Does anyone actually read them? If you're interested in ad analysis in more categories, see our Competitive Intelligence resources page for more.
ABX Shares Competitive Intelligence for Personal Care Products After Analysis of Print Ads
- Celebrities scored no higher than product-only or model ads
- Model ads had the fewest negative scores
- Product-only ads had the widest range, from the very highest to the very lowest!
- And … 'real woman' ads were consistently low scoring – indicating, perhaps, this trend has seen better days.
A look at the following chart shows how the various competitors stack up in ad effectiveness in print for the period. In actuality, the ads in this category cluster more favorably near the yellow 'average ad effectiveness' line than they do in many other categories.
So, what can we glean from some of these ads moving forward?
- Best Ad – Neutrogena’s CLEAN IS ONE THING. DOUBLE CLEAN IS THE NEW THING scored an ABX Index of 129 (29% above average) and phenomenal 'Reputation' and 'Action' scores. The ad is well written, informative and clear.
ABX Advertising Effectiveness Scores
- Most 'Challenged' Ad – This Maybelline New York ad simply has no brand recognition. Can you read the copy? Maybe a Millennial can (which is most likely the target), but good luck to the rest of us (as per the GenPop scores below).
ABX Advertising Effectiveness Scores
- Most 'Surprising' Ad - Clinique's FACE FORWARD ad shows an attractive "real woman" influencer that did well in 'Awareness,' which means the branding was clear, but that's about all. Does this indicate that 'real woman' advertising is over? Maybe.
ABX Advertising Effectiveness Scores
As Digiday's @hilarymilnes recently reported,The Limited just launched a new "real woman" campaign. We'll be watching to see if the results! And, be watching for other ABX studies such as Competitive Intelligence for Retail, Financial Services, Automotive and more.
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How the ABX Testing is Done
ABX provides ad effectiveness scores from human respondents against 14 variables and in all media types. ABX Index values are a comparison of the results of an ad versus the average of all ads in the ABX database (100,000+ ads). Click for more information about definitions and methodology.
