Brand Evaluation.

What attracted me to the brand NARS was the clear creativity and the strong versatility in looks that the brand portrays through their advertisement images which vary from a clean minimal look to strong performance style compositions. The main attraction for me was the recent advertisement campaign featuring Tilda Swinton which displayed individual creativity that is often over looked by other beauty brands. NARS is a brand created for professional use. The founder Francois Nars wanted to create a brand that could empower women to experiment and have fun with makeup creating a line that was practical, professional and a life style brand for the future.

The product packaging is simplistic yet luxurious. NARS believes that every woman that buys their products should have a true experience of NARS as a brand right from the box, to the compact or lipstick packaging. NARS packaging is a chic, modern, and classic. The semi matte texture of the packaging is there to be experienced by the consumer giving them a taste of luxury just as much as the product itself. The true purpose and quality of the products is known for its long lasting, highly pigmented and high standard quality cosmetic range.

NARS price points vary from the highest price of £60 for restorative night treatment face cream to the lowest price of a £16 lip liner pencil with an average price point of around £30. This is very reasonable within the cosmetic industry particularly in relation to the professional quality of the products and sets the brand in the mid to high point between low range beauty brands and higher end brands with an average price point of £45.

The promotional campaigns by NARS have been revolutionary as Francois the creative director and founder has always challenged and pushed the beauty industries notions of beauty. Being the first beauty brand to feature black models within their commercial advertisements, Francois is always looking to push the conventions of what society sees as beautiful. This in turn has created a brand with a huge consumer audience ranging from younger teenage girls right through to women in their 70’s allowing women of all ages and nationalities to feel empowered by makeup.

I was inspired by the vast and growing originality and unique feel of the brand. Its ability to relate to every women giving each a luxurious experience I found hard to portray within my final five advertisement images. The brand has so many faces; creative, simplistic, minimalist, playful, experimentative, chic that understanding how to approach each campaign needed to be well researched. I  began by exploring my own creative ideas and incorporated these into the Spring/Summer 15 trend reports. From here I then looked back to the brand and further looked at how I could encompass their ethos within my creative outlook. Along the process I found that I was so drawn to the brand creatively that I naturally understood and was able to portray their ideologies within my own creative outlook. I consequently feel that that the images i have created demonstrate my own ideas but fit the brand as a whole.