Initial research of brands

From todays seminar we were given the brief for this unit, this included the list of brands that we were to choose from. The brands on this list were as follows;

ILLAMASQUA

BOBBI BROWN

YSL

LAURA MERCIER

DIOR

REVLON

ELLIS FAAS

CHANEL

TOM FORD

SHISEIDO

CHARLOTTE TILBURY 

NARS

MAX FACTOR

LANCOME

MAC

GIVENCHY

Looking at this list there were a couple of brands that I had not heard of before, this being Ellis Faas and Shiseido, therefore I decided to do some basic research into these brands to see if they would be something I would be interested in creating my looks for. 

Ellis Faas. 

when looking on the Ellis Faas website it reminded me a little of MAC, I think this was because of the set up of the site. I found Ellis Faas to be an experimental brand, I liked the images that were posted on the site, however some of them were a little out there such as the image of a woman peeling the makeup off her face as if it was skin, as opposed to simple clean images that some of the other brands portray. The main focus of Ellis Faas is the red colour they supply, this would be seen as their USP product. This is because it claims to be very close to the colour of human blood, this was shown in the promotional video that was featured on the page which again was quite bold and out there. The visuals seemed to be set in a laboratory with experimentations going on, the lipsticks were dropped on white background from pipettes that gave the impression of blood, this was then reiterated by images such as hands around a woman's neck that again covey the blood theme. When exploring the site I found that the general ethos of the brand was to concentrate on the human bodies colours. I found this to be true from the fact that they claim their red 'is like blood' and that their products are all based on something called 'human colours', this means that this brand has created products that compliment each individuals skin tone and therefore customers are able to choose the right product to suit them. The price point of this brand seemed to be a higher end from the products I looked at, for example their red lipstick costs £23.00.

Shiseido was another brand that I had not heard of. From the off set I felt more attracted to this brand out of the two as they had a section dedicated to skin care as well as makeup. When on Shiseido's website my first reaction was 'ooooh' and I instantly liked the cover image on the home page. Shiseido is a high end brand, this was clear from the products i looked at such as the primer that cost £30.00. Shiseido as a brand originates from Japan and the general ethos of the company is to be very clean and organic, I can tell this from reading the quote 'helping people to live beautifully'. The trademark of this brand was a Camellia plant, when researching this plant it stated that the flower could 'bloom when little else grows' this could be a good branding technique as by using this Shiseido are essentially saying they 'bloom' in a competitive market. Another way that I could tell that this brand was a minimalistic brand,focused on natural beauty and taking care of the skin was that another brand owned by the company that owns Shiseido was Bare Minerals.

I really liked this brand and was very happy that I decided to research the brands that I had not heard of as this will help me when deciding the brand I would like to use for this unit.

References: 
https://www.shiseidogroup.com/company/glance/
https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=327
http://www.ellisfaas.com/
http://www.shiseido.co.uk/