Top Beauty Brands Using Direct Marketing

Your question: What are the top direct marketing beauty brands?

My answer: Great question, and a pretty tough one, too. I’ve tackled your question by quantifying the overall marketplace. I’ve also found some data on media spend by cosmetics and other personal care brands in several direct marketing channels: Direct response television, catalogs and radio.

The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) estimates that approx. 3.5 million people shop and order cosmetics and toiletries via the phone or by mail, over the course of a year. This equates to about 1.6% of all cosmetics/toiletries purchases. So, it’s a pretty large market. These direct marketers are using a combination of long and short-form infomercials, catalogs and other direct response channels such as direct response TV.

Response Magazine does an excellent job of reporting on media spend, by category and by company. I urge you to check out their research, but I’ve highlighted some key findings here:

• In Q1 2008, Cosmetics, Hair and Personal Care firms spent $73,460,100 in long-form infomercials (30 minutes). Sadly, the research did not report on media spending by individual firm/brand.
• In Q4 2007, Drug and Toiletries firms spent $2,337,600 in direct response television.
• The two leading advertisers in this category were Media Power (marketers of vitamins and other health/beauty products) and NAC Vitamin Company–who made the top 10 list of leading direct response tv advertisers.
• In Q1 2008, Drug and Toiletries firms spend $351,519,700 in short form direct response television.
• The two leading advertisers in this category were: Proactiv Solutions that spent $47,669,300 and Nutrisystem that spent $42,657,800.
• See the following chart that lists the top short form advertisers.

Another excellent resource I found is Infomercial Monitoring Service. This firm keeps track of which companies are advertising on TV–how often, etc. Their services are subscription-based, so for the skinny on what beauty brands are up to in regards to television ads, you might consider purchasing their data. I have access to 2004 data that lists the following Beauty brands in the Top 50 Infomercials (based on frequency of ads aired on national cable networks):

• bareMinerals
• Proactiv
• Youthful Essence
• Sheer Cover
• Principal Secret
• Murad
• FirmaLift

In regards to catalogers, note that there are only three “Personal Care Products” firms that made the DMA’s list of the top 100 catalogers, in terms of customer growth (2005 data–sorry–that’s the most current I could find…).

1. Yves Rocher
2. Healthy Living
3. Caswell Massey

I welcome additional comments with more information. While I did my best to provide as much information as I could gather on this topic, I know that there are experts out there who can flesh out the answer in greater detail.