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Trendwatch Upcoming trends What’s next? BW Confdential pinpoints 10 trends for tomorrow’s beauty products and marketing strategies by Nadia di Martino 3D printing brings new dimension to beauty 3D printing techniques are set to usher in a new era for many industries, and the possibilities for beauty are endless, say observers. Recently, L’Oreal announced that it is partnering with bioprinting start-up Organovo to fgure out how to 3D print living, breathing derma that can be used to test cosmetics for toxicity and effcacy. Digital printing could be also applied for mass customization of cosmetics packaging, according to Jeremy Garrard, business development director at Quadpack Group. “3D printing could be used to create components like charms or accessories such as a ceramic bead on a perfume bottle,” he says. Several years ago a small US brand dedicated to fghting eczema, called Anita’s Balm, opted for 3D printing to customize the bottle design of its products. It used biodegradable materials that decompose faster than traditional plastic and produced a biodegradable roll-up container that sold out quickly. In 2014, Harvard student Grace Choi went a step further presenting Mink, her 3D make-up printer at TechCrunch Disrupt. However, issue number one with this idea remains the cost, as a lot of formulation work would be required to properly develop it. Making tech work Understanding how and when consumers interact with brands and collecting data from multiple sources is a challenge. User conversations can happen in social media, in-store or over the phone in call centers, and there is no easy way to get the full picture. However, this is changing rapidly, according to Carl Holmquist, advertising technology expert for brand communication agency Battenhall. “There is a new set of tools that enable brands to look at user engagement over time, in one view, and identify the most valuable groups of consumers. Today, big data and automated decision-making are being introduced in online marketing. It’s an advanced data collection process, and many of the automated decision-making tools run mathematical algorithms in the background,” he comments. As a result, he says, marketing teams are beginning to hire data scientists and developers who can make use of the collected information. He says that beauty brands should soon also start exploiting the benefts of such a scientifc approach to consumer behavior, which has become increasingly segmented and hard to decipher. Video set to grow further The future will see video dominate as the social media content format of choice, according to data from social media analytics company SocialBakers. Blog posts in particular will drive social engagement even more. Video content is now so popular on the web that it has surpassed even Facebook. However, videos posted on Facebook still receive many more shares than those posted on YouTube, as Facebook is by nature dedicated to sharing. In 2013, Unilever realized that no brand had invested in YouTube tutorials to help women with their hair. The company grabbed the opportunity and brought all its haircare brands together for the frst time to create All Things Hair. The YouTube channel of video styling tips from leading vloggers uses big data analysis of search terms and trend predictions to ensure content is relevant, useful and authentic. All Things Hair currently has three million subscribers, with 64 million channel views since its launch. 126 November-December 2015 - N°24 - BW Confidential