Nivea - Beauty Is As Beauty Does

Nivea - the world renowned beauty and body care company - has just launched their “Beauty Is” campaign. This campaign is aimed at traversing traditional advertising with a pseudo-Web 2.0 push of their updated website. In conjunction with Skinkers - Nivea has created a desktop application (ticker) that is essentially designed to “drive” the consumer to the revamped website. Actually, Nivea made no bones about plunking out a press release to the effect that the beauty site is going to use the new ‘widget' to drive traffic. Even if the gadget is not exactly Web 2.0 stuff, at least the honesty is refreshing.

Nivea is the world's largest body care brand in the world and their site is actually very striking and useful. This story would not really be “tech worthy” except for the interesting boldness of this release and the apparent lameness of the campaign in Web 2.0 terms. I downloaded the ticker and it is quite a beautiful little bug. It is supposed to “build an ongoing conversation with Nivea consumers”, but given all we have seen - it amounts to a SPAM tool essentially. I know this sounds harsh but a company as well thought of and well healed as Nivea should have come up with something better for a Web 2.0 anything insertion.

Warning! Use Tools Properly

The tool does provide interactive messages to the user's desktop, and the home site is wonderfully laid out with the tools we have grown accustomed to. The problem (and someone should have told Nivea) is that we do not need more tool-bar items, and especially those so narrowly focused. Unless we are talking about Nivea dependent debutantes, this “notify/news” addition is all but useless and time/space consuming. I think Nivea would have been well advised to consult some of us before designing such a distracting and transparently Nivea-centric object. Skinkers has covered all the bases as far as designing the gadget, as it can be used on everything from PC's to handhelds. The problem with the tool is the intent without consideration of content or time. For Web 3.0 applications, developers are going to have to provide some real value and content for a user to download an application, as so many already do.

Out of Their Own Mouths

Beauty Is was designed to drive a targeted audience directly to the website according to Carat Media's Rebecca Taylor. The release went on to point out that the tool is designed to provide a highly visible (kinda like SPAM or banner ads), interactive (that makes it Web 2.0 I guess?) message machine for “proven” traffic drivers according to Sarah Taylor Communications Manager at Beirsdorf UK Ltd. (Nivea's owners). The new site is laden with beauty and lifestyle tips, so I can only assume this is a test to see if the tool will further engage Nivea product users.

A great site - with an ill thought out tool

Beauty Is Only Skin Deep

Nivea is a great company. This fumbling attempt to take their marketing to the next level is exemplary of traditional companies that don't get it yet. The concept is actually fairly ingenious, but this new and brazen form of optimization is clumsy at best. Even the most devout Nivea fans and users are going to feel invaded unless this gadget can do more than send them back for more in store specials. The reason I decided to post this was to illustrate how even the most progressive ideas and strategies can be done wrong. Health and beauty are certainly topics that Nivea can address for their users, and if the tool were more refined it might just add value. Adding another button to our already burdened tool bars that basically reminds us of Nivea is simply not what we should accept or expect from such a company. This is obviously a case of “Beauty Is As Beauty Does.” In this case the rouge is slightly past too dark and the lipstick is off tone.