Industry expert day gave me so much to think about part 2

The second talk we received was by Eli Ankutse, for a relatively young person Eli has achieved a fair amount.

• Founder of Rose Thorne Rose

• Publisher and editor and chief at Joshua’s magazine and Samson’s magazine

• Mancave creative director

• Founder of Niven & Joshua

For me personally his talk just showed how one concept can progress to another.

His involvement within the fragrance industry started with a skin care brand as an online retailor selling branded/ designer products. His growing interests within these products led to him starting an online blog ‘Ape to gentlemen’ reviewing products with his own opinion on their performance, what I think allowed this blog to be so successful is that again similar to Michelle he had a passion for what he was talking about, he was focusing on products that he felt were relatable to the consumer.

Which is key if your consumer can’t relate or connect to what you are trying to communicate to them, then it is pointless pursue because at the end of the day the consumer is one if not the main driving force behind every idea.

One of the biggest projects and ideas that Eli has worked on is ‘Mancave’ which is a natural grooming range for the male consumer. What I found interesting about when he was speaking about this idea was his understanding of the make consumer which’s really influenced his involvement with the project.

He understood that a males view on cosmetics is very different to a woman’s they most often buy them for a purpose rather than to make them look good, since there grooming habits are completely different.

“there is really no such thing as male or female fragrance … we perceive them as being gendered from the way they are advertised”

With the ‘Mancave’ idea there key understanding was that they needed to create an all-round product, they knew that male consumers don’t really take interest to the ingredients or benefits of a product instead if they are looking for a moisturiser and the first bottle they see is said product they will just buy that without looking into it. From all these insights it led to further areas on development such as packaging, for me this just shows how the right research can progress and influence an idea from start to finish clearly.

They also knew that’s most male grooming products are brought by women for the male consumer to use so one of the main areas when it came to the creative concept of the brand from packaging, constantly referring to consumer architypes was key.

What I found quite striking from the studies that Eli had carried out was that ‘men said they don’t like fragrance on the skin as they think it might aggravate but what they say and what they do is different since most of their products contain fragrance’.

After leaving his lecture I instantly had a couple of ideas as where I could take this project, and without having done any research at the moment the first thought I have was to look within the male grooming sector as I feel that could have the most room for further development.