Mumbai, India – In its latest report titled ‘Objectionable ads in the Beauty & Personal Care category and the rising impact of influencer marketing & D2C brands’, ad watchdog for India Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) has revealed that the personal care sector has emerged amongst the top three violators.

According to ASCI, the personal care sector contributed to 12% of all objectionable advertisements it examined. The regulatory body processed complaints against 1,126 advertisements in the said sector from 2021 to 2022 and from Q1 to Q3 of 2022 until 2023.

The report has further unveiled that 5.7% of ads in violation of the ASCI Code were from the personal hygiene category, 30.3% from the skincare category, 24.7% from the cosmetics category, 19.4% from hair care, and 17.5% from multiple categories.

Social media influencers were responsible for 68% of the ads processed in the personal care category, out of which 92% violated the ASCI Code and required modifications. Of those, 77% were not contested and the voluntary compliance rate stood at 91%.

Meanwhile, 84% of violative ads belonged to D2C brands, which have a significant presence on social and digital platforms The platform split for violative ads in personal care was also divided amongst Instagram with 55.3%, YouTube with 25.9%, Facebook with 11.3%, and websites with 4.8%.

Speaking about the report, CEO and Secretary General of ASCI Manisha Kapoor said, “Personal care, particularly on digital platforms, is a high engagement space for consumers, and it is important that their interests be protected. Over the past few years, ASCI has constantly strived to update its guidelines to extend consumer protection to many emerging sectors and platforms.”

Kapoor likewise mentioned that the organisation’s AI-based digital monitoring made it possible to efficiently identify violations and drive compliance.

Moreover, the other top two violators mentioned in the report were education at 26% and healthcare at 15%. The launch of influencer guidelines in May 2021 along with ASCI’s AI-based tools has also added to the increased number of ads under scrutiny.

The report follows the amendments in ad disclaimers the ASCI has made last month.

Manila, Philippines – Leading e-commerce Shopee has announced that the platform and Colgate-Palmolive inked their first Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to jointly drive e-commerce penetration of its oral care, home care, and personal care products and category on Shopee. The tie-up is a multi-year partnership and will run across seven markets in the region.

Starting 2022, Colgate-Palmolive will become a strategic partner under Shopee’s Regional Champion Brands Program, which will help strengthen Colgate-Palmolive’s online presence and deliver more of its products to consumers through Shopee’s extensive reach. 

Shopee’s Regional Champion Brands Program is an exclusive, by-invite-only program that is open to top brand partners, aimed to better support brands in accelerating their growth on regional and local levels. Shopee currently has 17 brands on board the program.

Acording to Shopee, since launching the company’s official store on Shopee Mall in 2019, Colgate-Palmolive has achieved steady growth year-on-year and has consecutively ranked among the Top 5 personal care brands during Shopee’s year-end mega shopping campaigns. Shopee shared that in the recent 11.11 Big Christmas Sale, Colgate achieved a record highest sales in a single day and grew more than 100% vs 9.9 Super Shopping Day. 

With the partnership, Colgate aims to grow its digital commerce business across Southeast Asia more than 20 times by 2025.

Mukul Deoras, president of Colgate-Palmolive APAC, said, “We are excited to grow our partnership with Shopee to better serve our customers in the region. As the world’s leading Oral Care company, we look forward to winning together in Personal Care with Shopee by maximizing the potential of our digital commerce business. To achieve this, we will focus on delivering greater value and enhanced customer experiences through our differentiated product offerings and innovations.”

Meanwhile, Chris Feng, Shopee’s CEO, commented, “Shopee is glad to be a strategic e-commerce partner to one of the world’s most recognized Personal and Oral Care brands. As a market leader, Colgate-Palmolive has achieved tremendous growth in the past year and will be a valuable partner in helping to drive further online expansion of the Personal Care category on Shopee. We hope to support Colgate-Palmolive in capturing more opportunities through our robust ecosystem and deep understanding of consumers in each market.”

To accelerate its growth momentum, Colgate-Palmolive will continue to activate a hyper-localized strategy. Earlier this year, Colgate-Palmolive and Shopee launched a joint oral care study to identify gaps, behaviors and unmet needs of Generation Z shoppers. As a result of the insights garnered, Colgate-Palmolive and Shopee co-created and launched a new toothbrush series with the ‘Brush Your Way’ regional campaign in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

Hong Kong – Hong Kong-based beauty and personal care chain SaSa has announced in its latest financial results for the year 2020/2021 that it is expecting to close 15 to 20 stores throughout the year. 

SaSa is only one of the many businesses that have shut down operations as a strategic move over pandemic-induced economic downturn. According to the company, the markets of the Hong Kong and Macau SARs dealt a severe blow to the group’s sales performance with the pandemic bringing tourism to a standstill. 

Since the beginning of February 2020, the cumulative number of Mainland Chinese visitors in the Hong Kong SAR up to now has plunged to almost zero year on year, and due to social distancing initiatives imposed by the Hong Kong SAR government, local consumer sentiment has also been dampened. 

SaSa’s brick-and-mortar stores are established in Hong Kong SAR, Macau SAR, and Malaysia. 

SaSa
Inside a SaSa store

Overall, the group’s retail sales in the markets of the Hong Kong and Macau SARs dropped by 58.1% year on year, while its same-store sales decreased by 54.4% during the financial year. Meanwhile, in Malaysia, turnover decreased by 34.9% in the financial year. 

Due to the movement control orders in Malaysia, the group’s stores were temporarily closed for nearly 100 days in total. As of 31 March 2021, the total number of SaSa’s retail stores in Hong Kong and Macau SARs was reduced from the peak of 118 two years ago to 100. Among closed stores in Hong Kong SAR, 80% were located in tourist districts. 

With this, the company has expressed plans to leverage its online sales and deliver an enhanced customer experience by combining online with offline. 

Sasa
SaSa’s current website

Compared to offline sales, the beauty retail chain’s online business had been looking up, rising by 45.4% to HK$501.3m accounting for 16.5% of the total turnover from the group’s continuing operations, up from 6% in the previous financial year. 

The company shared that the group’s long-term vision is to grow businesses beyond brick-and-mortar operations. By growing the share of sales from online platforms, it trusts that it can help reduce its reliance on physical stores. 

“Through persistently adjusting and rationalizing the store network, the group could improve its overall cost structure and lower the breakeven point for the traditional retail business, thus reinforcing its competitiveness and profitability in the long term,” the group said.

The group will work to further realize the complementary effects of combining the advantages of online business and physical stores to improve both customer experience and the group’s profitability. 

It plans to execute the integration of online and offline operations. The group said that it will be improving inventory and logistic arrangements to provide a seamless O2O customer experience. For SaSa, the O2O business offers a more favorable gross margin and basket size owing to the element of personal service when compared to pure online sales channels. All these mean a more attractive profit margin for the O2O business, an area that the group wishes to develop to its fullest potential.

Dr Simon Kwok, SBS, JP, the chairman and CEO of the Group, said that online business has become the new focus of the retail industry, and that they are dedicated to expediting development in the new retail landscape by investing more resources in their online business, unceasingly strengthening the brand and adjusting their product portfolio. 

“The Group will also proactively propel businesses beyond our core markets in Hong Kong and Macau SARs and promote the online business, thus diversifying and expanding our revenue portfolio and customer base and creating value for our stakeholders in the long term.”