Korean consultancy Beaus Company handles marketing strategies for big-name beauty companies
In South Korea, one consultancy is making a name for itself as a digital marketing firm specializing in the cosmetics industry: Beaus Company. Along with expertise in viral marketing using social media and the power of influencers, they also specialize in gathering raw consumer feedback through digital communications and analyzing such data in great detail. Their unique know-how is helping various companies and brands to achieve success.
Founded in 2013, just when South Korean cosmetics began to achieve increasing prominence around the world, Beaus Company is a firm that provides overall support for beauty brands’ marketing strategies. Their strengths lie in data analysis and viral marketing, and they are also the only beauty industry advertising agency in South Korea that has official partnerships with Google and Facebook.
Beaus Company currently has around 40 employees and is also connected with a network of around 200 influencers in the beauty and lifestyle fields. Along with matching ad campaigns to the most suitable influencers, they also keep several media channels (often in collaboration with influencers) and have a system for proliferating in-house-produced creative content, including videos.
All their media channels combined have over 10.5 million followers, and based on data of users’ reactions to the content on these channels, they’re able to scrutinize and suggest to brands the next step they ought to take and support them in developing within the market in the most optimal way.
Another outstanding aspect of the company is the creation of databases filled with detailed data from analyzing consumers’ raw feedback scooped up via beauty-related social media communications and also from the results of previously-handled marketing policies of South Korean beauty brands and items. For companies that want to gain attention within South Korean media, Beaus Company takes on the role of an “external strategy office for brands”.
Total support through IMC marketing
One reason for labeling Beaus Company as an “external strategy office” is due to how they use the method of IMC (Integrated Marketing Communication). IMC is a marketing method where a diverse range of separate media channels is used while simultaneously being managed in unison in order to send a consistent message to customers.
Specifically, it involves getting insights into what kind of brands sell gauged from results and issues arising from the process of brand marketing, as well as from popularity, salability, and market impact. This data is then sorted into a database and judged on the 3 indexes of “Performance” (the results of marketing), “Consumer Opinion”, and “Market Compatibility”. When called on by a brand, Beaus Company visualizes the brand’s position based on these indexes and recommends the marketing method that is best suited to them.
Beaus Company CEO Jinho Park has said to Korean media that “our services are useful for major companies when they’re either thinking about whether to rebrand or not, releasing new products, or launching new brands. Recently we’ve also seen an increase in clients who have partnered with us from the initial stages of product planning. We own many different points of contact with users over social media, and so our clients see us as being able to catch market trends and customer needs faster than others.” (Excerpt from Mobiinside “Beaus Company, digital marketing specializing in beauty ”)
CEO Park also says that with South Korea’s cosmetics industry being the red ocean that it is, the most important thing for a brand is a good positioning strategy. He openly boasts that the data required for seeking out that positioning is understood best by his firm.
So far Beaus Company has handled over 900 beauty-related marketing campaigns (as of September 2019). Park says confidently that “it’s no exaggeration to say that we’ve handled the largest number of campaigns in the industry”. And it’s not just quantity, but the quality of their clients that is impressive. Their clients have included a number of big-name companies and brands, such as Amorepacific, LG Household & Health Care, L’Occitane, and Missha.
In South Korea, there are pioneers such as Memebox that have found success in running online stores and review sites while simultaneously developing their own private brands and tie-up products based on purchase data. With the increase in data-driven startups, we’re also seeing the evolution of marketing agencies. They’ve gone from the previous era with its emphasis on products themselves to the new generation — represented by Beaus Company — which concentrates on collecting digital communication and customer feedback (or data) linked to content and seeing what insights can be fished from that data.
Text: Ching Li Tor
Original text (Japanese): Jonggi HA
