11 : 08 : 23 : Weekly Debrief

China – Beauty and skincare behemoth Estée Lauder announced an exclusive partnership with Manchester United in July 2023 to tap into the club's fanbase in China and the wider Asia Pacific region. With Manchester United boasting a staggering 250m fans in China alone, the collaboration comes as an intriguing strategy for Estée Lauder, considering its forte lies in the beauty realm.

Erica Kwok, senior vice president of integrated marketing at Estée Lauder, explained that male consumers, who are often passionate about sports, are a big target market for the brand. This alignment with China's football frenzy holds the potential to not only address Estée Lauder's current challenges but also carve out a substantial market share in the long term. Feigua data shows that in the first half of 2023, the GMV of men’s makeup on popular Chinese social media app Douyin surged by 364.6% year-on-year.

The focus of this pioneering partnership will be on Estée Lauder's iconic night serum, encapsulated in the signature little brown bottle. The announcement, featuring Manchester United stars including Marcus Rashford and Luke Shaw, will emphasise the shared values between skincare, sports and competition.

'As one of the most followed sports teams in the world, we understand the importance of educating fans on a healthy lifestyle, and skincare is an integral part of that process,' said Manchester United’s CEO of alliances and partnerships, Victoria Timpson. 'In the same way our athletes prepare the night before a match with regular training rituals, healthy skin also requires a consistent and effective regimen.'

Our Men's Beauty Market report previously explored how a new kind of male beauty consumer, from China and Korea to Europe and the US, disagrees with traditional masculine ideals and is driving demand for grooming and skincare products, as well as gender-fluid makeup.

In the digital age, data has become the modern equivalent of gold. But in the race to collect, own and analyse data, organisations are face growing distrust and fear. The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal shook public faith in how personal data was handled back in 2018, when data from 87m people was used without their consent to inform political campaigns. This event shed light on how corporations, even the most high-profile ones, can fail to protect the users who trusted them enough to give away their data. Massive data breaches from companies including LinkedIn (in 2021) and Alibaba (in 2019), impacting millions to billions of users’ personal information, have left many questioning who they can trust with their data.In 2023, those who are either somewhat or very concerned about their privacy online represent 68% of people worldwide – signalling a shift in how they think about their personal digital information (source: International Association of Privacy Professionals).

From the most digitally savvy consumers to those who have only recently realised how logging in on an app means giving away data, the importance of data privacy and its risks are now mainstream concerns for all.

'We're moving in this era of trust, and privacy is just one slice of that,' Jodi Daniels, founder and CEO of Red Clover Advisors, an Atlanta-based agency aiming to simplify the complexity of data privacy, tells LS:N Global. 'People are trying to trust companies, and those need to prove they can be trusted by being good stewards of user data.'