Challenges of designing packaging for men's "beauty" products

“The challenge in the fast-growing men's beauty segment is to find ways to wrap a quintessentially feminine product in masculine hues and lingo,” according to a recent article on The Globe and Mail.com. Beauty care becomes skin care, anti-wrinkle cream becomes moisturizer and bronzer turns into “power bronze.”

P & G with Head and Shoulders and Gillette brands, as well as Unilever (Dove and Vaseline) are developing products to satisfy the new male. This new male shopper is lazy, according to the piece, and not prone to trying new products (may use his wife’s stuff). But he can be more loyal than a woman once he finds what he likes. Often the woman of the house may bring home a male grooming product for her partner to try.

Quick tips: don’t intimidate by offering too many choices; deeper blues, gray, black and brown are popular “male” colors; shapes matter--men equate jars to women’s beauty products, so use pumps and tubes instead.

Dove even shaved off a bit of the elegant curve to its soap container to offer a more masculine shape. Think about isolating men’s products somewhere in the front of the store so male shoppers do not have to pass through female shoppers.

Not everyone is convinced this market will boom, but many expect it to bloom within the next few years. “There's a perception that if you look dated and tired and old, your ideas are tired and old,” said Dave Lackie, editor of trade publication Cosmetics.

For me, a 50-year-old male, all I can say is it is going to be a cold day in “you know where” before I try any “guyliner.”

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