February 17, 2023

2022 China’s Beauty Industry Marketing Hot Topics and Latest Trends

The consumer market in China’s beauty industry has always remained high, especially consumers’ enthusiasm for beauty and skincare products. We have summarized the KOL launch strategy, hot topics, trends and innovative marketing in the beauty industry in 2022 based on the “Miaokan · Beauty Industry Observation” released by Miaozhen in January 2023.

Targeting strategy – KOL

The data shows that both international brands and domestic brands use KOL delivery strategies such as Double 11 in the promotion are concentrated on Xiaohongshu and Douyin platforms, but the strategies for selecting KOLs are somewhat different.

International big brands:

Xiaohongshu – Mid-tier (T3) and KOC (T4) KOL (followers between 50,000 and 500,000)
Douyin – Macro (T2) KOL (followers between 2 and 5 million)

Domestic brands:

Xiaohongshu – Mid-tier (T3) and KOC (T4) KOL (followers between 50,000 and 500,000)
Douyin – Mid-tier (T3) KOL (followers between 500,000 – 2 million followers)

Beauty Hotspots – Potential Topics

Sustainable beauty concept

Sustainability mainly refers to the process of maintaining environmental balance and harmony in resource development, investment direction, technological development and institutional change while meeting human needs and future development. Consumer discussion about sustainable beauty increased by 56% YoY in 2022. Therefore, the concept of sustainable beauty has begun to rise with the improvement of environmental awareness, many international brands have begun to launch a series of promotions related to the concept of sustainable beauty. These include eco-friendly packaging cartons for products from Origins and P&G, Lancôme’s empty bottle recycling project for skin care products, and the use of refillable packaging for Chanel’s Red Camellia series, etc.

Light daily makeup

Pseudo-plain makeup and light makeup are popular makeup looks in 2022, because consumers prefer versatile light makeup, which can not only meet various needs of daily life but also have the effect of reducing age. Other makeup looks that have aroused trending discussion include light European and American makeup, Japanese makeup, Korean makeup and so on. Consumers choose low-saturation lipstick colours to match light makeup when choosing beauty products, such as bean paste colour or milk tea colour. In addition to daily life, consumers also draw appropriate makeup according to different seasons and festivals, especially lipstick colours. For example, choose bean paste colour in spring and summer, choose black tea brown in autumn and winter, use purple for Halloween, choose reddish brown for New Year’s Eve, and so on.

Trends – New scenes of outdoor activities, new consumption of cross-sector cooperation and Metaverse

New scene: outdoor sports

Outdoor activities such as camping, cycling, skateboarding, etc. have a high degree of discussion after the lifting of the lockdown in China, so some beauty brands combine sports scenes with product efficacy and increase the promotion of sports scenes. For example, Estee Lauder invited KOLs to promote and highlight the characteristics of DW’s long-lasting oil control, especially by combining popular outdoor sports manufacturers such as camping, frisbee, etc., and use the scene and effect as a selling point to attract consumers.

New tech experience: Metaverse

In addition, beauty brands have also begun to join the upsurge of the Metaverse, apart from cooperation with virtual digital humans, they also try to release NFT digital collections, create virtual flagship stores and other gameplay, with the help of meta-universe technology to bring consumers a new experience. Brands such as Lancôme create virtual flagship stores to bring users an immersive 3D reality-enhanced shopping experience.

Overall, the beauty market is expected to have more paths and developments in the future, and different marketing strategies and industry trends will have an impact. If you want to know more about advertising or KOLs on media platforms, please contact us with the form below to access the full report.