WOMENKIND

It’s no secret – nearly every little girl, at some point in her life, dreams of becoming a princess. This is something that the creative staff at Majolica Majorca knew all too well. According to a recent article in Ad Age, the Majolica Majorca staff was able to bring the fantasy alive for many young women in Japan while making their brand a success story at the exact same time. Now, the popular makeup company is available worldwide and shows no signs of slowing down.

Since the desire of wanting to be a princess is so popular among young girls, it’s shocking that it took this long for a company to take that idea and build a successful empire with it. We believe that the key to their success lies within the sheer simplicity of their marketing campaign. They understood that girls didn’t want to spend a fortune on cosmetics and be bombarded with unrealistic images of what they were supposed to look like. Women don’t want to be treated like they were just kids either; they simply wanted to live the fantasy of being a princess. Majolica Majorca, brilliantly I may add, were able to make that dream a reality.

When you take a closer look, the story of Majolica Majorca’s rise to success is a fairy-tale in and of itself. How many companies can say they’ve met their yearly sales goal within six weeks alone? The concept was simple: they sold their products in beautiful, whimsical packages, and chose a price range that the average young woman could afford ($2.50-$25). Imagine, for as little as the price of a coffee, a 16-year-old girl could start living out her fantasy of actually feeling like a princess.

The genius part of the story is that Majolica Majorca’s parent company is Shiseido, the oldest hair care and cosmetic producer in the entire world. The thinking is, once young women develop a true loyalty to Majolica Majorca they’ll make the transition to Shiseido once they’re a bit older, therefore staying under the same umbrella and becoming a loyal customer of the brand for life. And why not? Since Majolica Majorca was able to deliver on their promise to turn young girls into princesses, these same girls, more likely than not, will expect Shiseido to deliver excellent results as well.

When the fantasy brand was ready to launch their new fragrance Majo Romantica, they employed a very strategic marketing move that propelled them to even more success than they expected. They collaborated with the popular brand Haagen-Dazs, as they had a new fondant-chocolate ice cream flavor launching. Just like Majo Romantica, it was “melty” and “sweet,” deeming it a perfect partnership. Collaborating with such a mainstream brand brought the makeup brand to convenience stores and drugstores worldwide, and the company jumped to 23% market share almost immedietly.

Once the makeup brand had already established a loyal customer base, they decided to take things to the next level. Joining forces with Park Hotel Tokyo, they created a Hotel Majorca room, designed by the brand’s creative staff. It had the full range of Majolica Majorca cosmetics on display for guests to play around with. Now that the fans of the brand already felt like princesses, they could stay in this room and actually live out their fantasy of being one in a space that embodied everything the brand stood for. Eventually they created a limited-time-only Hotel Majorca suite, which went for $615 a night and sold out within minutes.

Majolica Majorca demonstrates just how successful a company can be if they’re able to access the innermost dreams of the demographic they’re reaching out to and make those dreams become a reality. This is especially true when it comes to beauty products aimed at young women, since this demographic is already so concerned about physical appearance.

We here are WomenKind love that this is a story where everyone wins. Not only does Majolica Majorca succeed financially through very smart marketing strategies, but they’ve achieved an even greater goal than that – making young women feel beautiful, confident and princess-like in a generation where so many teenage girls do not.