Society’s Shift Toward Nature’s Beauty

New ways of packaging products will capture the promise of natural, classic, aging beauty, says award-winning designer Kenneth Hirst.

AUTHOR BIO: Kenneth Hirst, founder of Hirst Pacific Ltd, is an award-winning product, packaging and retail interiors designer with a proven reputation for design excellence and innovation. Hirst’s versatility and expertise have encompassed a wide range of disciplines-from luxury goods, consumer products, consumer packaging, home wares, and health and beauty products to medical equipment, electronic devices, lighting, retail environments and furniture design.

Cultural shifts are reflected through art, fashion and design. These shifts represent a new way in which society perceives the individual and the world. Evidence of this can be seen in our perception of beauty through both the high demand for anti-aging products and a trend toward natural beauty. In the beauty industry, these changes can be profound, and consequently have caused a decline in the use of color cosmetics, while creating new design opportunities in skin care that will characterize a new era.

The definition of beauty is portrayed through many cultural channels such as the media. Visual communication typically displays beauty through images of young, attractive, healthy women. When young is flaunted as beautiful, it is also conveying old is not and advocates women should stay youthful. It should then, be no surprise, last year’s best- selling beauty products were skin care-specifically, anti-aging remedies. Analysts predict the anti-aging skin care industry will reach global sales of $115.5 billion dollars by the end of 2010. According to a market research study, by 2015, the anti-aging industry is likely to explode and generate as much as $291.9 billion dollars worldwide. It seems consumers are doing whatever they can to remain forever young!

With global anti-aging sales skyrocketing, it is obvious women are not the only consumers buying into age prevention. In Britain this past year, men’s cosmetic sales were reported to be growing at twice the rate of the female market, with anti-aging products highest in demand. In Japan and Canada, research suggests more than half of the male population are comfortable using skin care products. Globally, the male beauty market is not only made up of ‘metro-sexual’ males, but a new male consumer has entered the market, the ‘ubersexual’. These men still maintain their macho manly traits while making up a large portion of the skin care market. ‘Ubersexuals’ are into beauty regimens, but want them advertised and displayed in masculine ways, with metallic or rugged designs.

No matter how beauty marketers target male consumers, men’s grooming products are predicted to exceed $33.2 billion dollars globally by 2015, fueling the aforementioned explosion. Many companies are jumping on the fertile opportunity to build a lucrative, male beauty empire. Anti-aging skin care, for both men and women range from twenty-five dollars a product to as much as four hundred dollars or more, for one ounce of serum. Products at these prices appear to have consumers believing they can defend against nature from taking its course.

Design is a primary reason consumers connect with their products’ identity and believe their miraculous promise. Presently, packaging for anti-aging potions are replicating designs found in the medical field. For example, some high-end creams are stored in amber jars, resembling apothecary containers, some serums use laboratory droppers or spatulas and other products are stored in tubes. These marketing tactics suggest anti-aging products solve or reverse physiological problems. However, consumers may no longer view age as a problem to cure, but a natural process one should embrace.

Unilever is one of the first companies focusing on the natural attributes of women and looking at the process of aging from a different angle, a positive one. Dove’s product line, Pro-Age, advertises older women accepting age comfortably. The following slogan-‘we believe that age is a part of what makes women beautiful, not an imperfection that needs to be corrected. It is about looking damn good for your age’ -captures women, being beautiful at any age. Pro-Age is one of many to make a shift in communication, informing consumers that natural age and beauty is in, while targeting them to buy into their Pro-Age, anti-aging product.

As new perceptions of natural beauty take hold in our consciousness and new types of consumers of all ages and sexes enter the category, new ways of presenting and packaging products will emerge that capture the promise of natural, classic, aging beauty.

Website: www.hirstpacific.com