Initiative to address mainland hair-removal attitudes for Strip + Browhaus

First opened in Singapore in 2002, Strip's so-called ‘Ministry of Waxing’ entered Shanghai in 2009, offering waxing services and championing hygiene of intimate areas and a painless beauty experience. Browhaus, an eyebrows and lashes expert, takes care of stray hair above the belt.

The brand faces a range of challenges in China, including a fiercely competitive market and old-fashioned cultural beliefs. The hair-removal market in the mainland is flooded with small beauty salons and home remedies. Local female consumers are fragmented on the idea of personal hair removal. Culturally, some believe not only that having body hair is fine but also that removing it may in fact mean bad luck.

The media business was awarded to Initiative after it presented a pitch that offered Strip + Browhaus a pay-for-performance service and a creative digital strategy leveraging the use of data.

Angela Ng, CEO of Initiative China, told Campaign Asia-Pacific that a pay-for-performance fee is correlated to the client's business performance, akin to how a salesperson is paid. This is a departure from the traditional agency commission (AC) payment structure.

"We created a research model of their business and provided some very measurable ways in which Strip + Browhaus can invest efforts to capture business growth,” added Shankar Ravikumar, chief of insights and analytics at Initiative China. The client's in-house creatives will be localised for the market with images and copy in Chinese.

BJ Macatulad, director of Strip + Browhaus Shanghai, commented on Initiative's appointment, “Their focus on performance, plus their breadth of capabilities, enthusiasm, and their keen understanding of our brand’s key value proposition in the local market gives us confidence.”

Initiative will help the brand communicate its key message for 2012: transformation. Jerry Clode, associate director of cultural insight for Added Value, told Campaign Asia-Pacific that normal waxing, much less brazillian waxing, is not yet a socially expected norm in China, even in tier-one cities.

A marketer like Strip + Browhaus will have to transform this lack of social expectations by pushing consumers out of their comfort zones and think about how to incorporate hair removal into the beauty routines of Chinese women, Clode explained.

"The traditional visual cues for beauty for a typical Chinese are hair [on the head], skin, eyes and figure shape," Clode said. "From the Western perspective, mothers pass on grooming behaviours as well as definitions of beauty to their daughters. But in China, it is not the case."

As a result, branding opportunities through a beautiful 'office heroine' character who is bold enough to talk about feminine expression may be one possibility, Clode suggested, alluding to the way Axe brand ambassador Edison Chen teaches fellow males how to pick up girls by wearing deodorant.

Brand messages must be sold in a more overt way instead of being too fuzzy or subtle, and should not be afraid to "simplify and specify" grooming habits, such as waxing and plucking, that will lead to an emotional benefit for modern Chinese females, or those who aspire to be modern, Clode added.