Isn’t product creativity important?

In the past two years, the discussion of product ideas at major industry conferences has become less obvious to the naked eye. Brand leaders prefer to talk pragmatically about product efficacy and raw material exclusivity rather than creative inspiration.
Last week, a cosmetics entrepreneur tweeted that he had canceled his product creation company, writing: “What is needed most in the age of efficacy is not product ideas, but product barriers.”
The entrepreneur summed up the reasons for the company’s failure: “With the advent of the era of efficacy, conceptual additions are suppressed, and effective additions and efficacy testing greatly increase the cost of products. (Cosmetics companies) cannot achieve rapid iteration and need product longevity. Therefore, it is necessary to create product barriers that are difficult to replicate, not product ideas that are easy to replicate.”
Within a cosmetics company, the birth of a new product needs to go through multiple links such as product creation, market research, competitive product analysis, feasibility analysis, product proposal, raw material selection, formula development, consumer inspection, and trial production. As the starting point of new products, from the end of the last century to the beginning of the 21st century, a product idea can even determine the success or failure of a domestic consumer goods enterprise.

There are also many such cases in the field of cosmetics. In 2007, Ye Maozhong, the marketing planner, suggested Baoya to be the first-generation successor of the “living water concept”, and positioned the product as a “deep moisturizing expert”. This cooperation directly laid the foundation for Proya’s rapid development in the next ten years.

In 2014, with the differentiated advantage of “no silicone oil”, Seeyoung rate rose rapidly in the highly competitive washing and care market. The brand has successively obtained the daily chemical standard of Hunan Satellite TV, cooperated with planning master Ye Maozhong to shoot a creative advertising blockbuster, signed a contract with the Korean superstar Song Hye Kyo as the spokesperson, and comprehensively promoted it in TV commercials, fashion magazines and online media… Therefore, “Vision Source has no silicone oil, no silicone oil is The concept of “source” is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people and has become a leading brand in this sub-category.
However, with the passage of time, successful cases like Proya and Seeyoung have become more and more difficult to replicate. The days when a brand could achieve rapid growth with just one product idea and one slogan are over. Today, cosmetic ideas are still valuable, but less so, for four reasons.

First, the centralized communication environment is no longer there.

For cosmetics, product ideas are often expressed as simple qualitative functional descriptions, which need to be implemented through communication and market education. In the era of media centralization, brand owners can achieve high-quality product ideas after finding high-quality product ideas, and let the brand or product ideas “pre-conceived” widely occupy consumers’ minds and build cognition by launching centralized media with TV as the core. barrier.

But today, in the decentralized information dissemination network, the media environment where consumers live is thousands of people, and before the cognitive barriers of a brand or product are established, its product creativity may have been replaced by imitators.

Second, the cost of trial and error increases significantly.

There are two principles of creativity, the first is to be fast enough, and the second is to be sharp enough. For example, one tech insider once said, “If ideas can be brought to market relatively easily, you can quickly see if there is something wrong with them, and then make corrections, risk a product with a small amount of money, and if It’s much easier to quit if it doesn’t work.”
However, in the cosmetics space, the environment for rapid new pushes no longer exists. The “Cosmetics Efficacy Claims Evaluation Specification” implemented last year requires that cosmetic registrants and filers should evaluate the efficacy claims of cosmetics within a specified time, and upload a summary of the basis for the product efficacy claims.
This means that new products come out longer and cost more. Cosmetics companies can no longer launch a large number of products as before, and can’t continue to use new products to stimulate consumer groups, and the trial and error cost of product creation has also increased significantly.

Third, conceptual additions are unsustainable. 

Before the implementation of the “Administrative Measures for Cosmetics Labeling”, conceptual additions were an open secret in the cosmetics industry. In product development, the purpose of adding conceptual raw materials is to facilitate the market claims of later products. It neither constitutes efficacy nor skin feel, but only needs to ensure the safety and stability in the formula.

But now, the implementation of the regulations on label management means that the conceptual addition of cosmetics has nowhere to hide under the detailed regulatory provisions, leaving the space for the creative department of the product to tell stories.

Finally, cosmetics consumption tends to be rational.

In addition to regulations, more importantly, with the equalization of online information, consumers have become more rational. Coupled with the drive of KOLs, many ingredient parties and formula parties have emerged in the market. They increasingly value the real efficacy of cosmetics and force them to Cosmetics companies build barriers that cannot be easily replicated by competitors. For example, many cosmetic companies are now seeking to cooperate with raw material suppliers to develop and supply customized raw materials, and establish core barriers through exclusive core ingredients.

Cosmetics has always been an industry that relies heavily on marketing, but now, the entire industry is standing at a turning point: when the era of fast everything is coming to an end, cosmetics companies must learn to slow down, go through the process of “de-experience”, and use the spirit of craftsmanship. Self-requirement, standing by product strength, tempering the supply chain for decades, doing basic research and bottom-level innovation, and creating barriers that are difficult to replicate with innovation and patents.