Cross-Promotion Boosts Brand Awareness
Swedisch Beauty, Creative Nail Team Up
by Matt Morgan
Both companies involved have reached outside their traditional selling channels in an effort to create brand awareness and generate consumer interest in uncharted markets. Early results were promising.
In 2004, each bottle of Swedish Beauty’s Bonfire™ will come with a 3.7-mililiter bottle of SolarOil® cuticle treatment from Creative Nail, and each bottle of Dangerously Dark™ will be paired with a half-ounce sample of SpaPedicure® Cucumber Heel Therapy.
The joint venture signals the further sophistication of the indoor tanning industry because, for ETS, it puts a wellknown product from another segment of the bodycare industry in the hands of discerning tanning customers.
“Everybody loves to get something free with what they’re buying,” says John Keiffner, executive director of business development for ETS and Swedish Beauty.
“We feel that with an industry that is 75 percent female that the cosmetic industry offered us an opportunity to develop such a cross-promotion,” he says. “We were fortunate to come up with a top company in the nail industry.”
ETS chose Creative Nail because of its stature in the market. Creative Nail is the largest manufacturer of professional nail and spa products worldwide, according to Jay Morris, the company’s vice president of North American sales.
“You go anywhere and you ask anyone about nail products, chances are any female will definitely recognize Creative Nail,” he says. “And that’s why ETS came to us, because they knew us.”
The two companies agreed on SolarOil and Cucumber Heel Therapy—rather than a nail polish—because of their universal appeal.
“We were looking at some of our topselling SKUs on the retail side, and those happen to be our No. 1- and No. 2- ranking retail items,” Morris says. “We also wanted to be able to offer products that would be cross-gender, that would appeal to both males and females.”
The promotion kicked off Nov. 1, and both sides have seen positive results.
“It was great at the beginning when we introduced it at the distributor level,” Keiffner says. “We got accolades from our distributors that this was a great concept. When we previewed it at the recently concluded show, everybody loved it.”
Morris estimates that end users were buying the Swedish Beauty lotions with Creative Nail gifts for about a week as of press time. “We’ve had approximately 35 in-bound calls requesting products, which in that short a period is pretty much a success,” he says. Additional calls came in as a result of the ITA World Expo. “Those have been very positive.”
ETS and Creative Nail have split the cost of the investment, which Morris says is sizable.
More cross-promotions are in the works at ETS, Keiffner says. The company’s other lotion brands, Australian Gold® and Caribbean Gold®, each target different types of tanners and likely would require different gift pairings.
