Promotion Techniques

Cosmetics are used to cover up blemishes on one's face, and to enhance an individual's appearance. Cosmetics and makeup are really about appearance and putting on a show. One of our most interesting visits was to Natura, a cosmetics company located in Brasil. They not only produce and sell cosmetics, but the way they use their promotion works just as cosmetics do to cover up the weaknesses of their own company. Their entire company seemed to be hiding under the surface makeup of appearances.

We toured the plant, and were given lots of information about their production and processes. Some problems and challenges of the company were identified. Our company guide always came back, however, to how great Natura was. She focused on the volume of their production, and their number of sales consultants. She talked about their goals for increasing sales consultants. She talked about how great Natura was in its environmental awareness policies. Natura is the first company to use organic alcohol in its perfumes and recycles a lot of its natural wastes. These benefits were stressed over and over again, as well as their vision and ideal to help their customers "be well" with themselves.

We did not, however, discuss much about their wastes, inefficiencies and wastes on the production line, overproduction, overstocked inventory, amount of error in production and shipment, number of active or retained consultants, or actual growth in sales.

At the end of our tour, we came in a conference room for snacks and watched two videos about Natura's goal and vision that "one day" we will all live in peace and harmony. The video had little to do with Natura's actual business or products. It did, however, make you feel good after watching it! If you didn't stop and think critically about the video, it could be very effective in leading you to trust Natura for their good vision and intentions.

The campus and surroundings of the company were very beautiful. On the outside surface, paying attention to Natura's appearances, everything looked great. Natura promotes an image. They sell a product, but promote an image. It was very interesting to see!

The company in charge of Peruvian tourism and exports, PromPeru, is very dependent upon promotion. When we got to our visit, we were each given a Peru tote bag filled with goodies representing Peru. We watched a promotional video that showed the many different attractions of Peru. Because there is so much diversity in the country, PromPeru says they promote Peru to everyone, in different ways.

PromPeru identifies its priority markets. They can do this by tracking the profile of tourists who visit Peru. For example, they can track the age, income, gender, amount of money, and number of days spent in Peru by U.S. tourists. By doing this, PromPeru can find out what parts of Peru are most attractive to this market of tourists, and market directly to them. PromPeru can do this to several different customer groups, and promote Peru according to group preferences.

PromPeru uses travel agents as an intermediary to promote Peruvian tourism to tourists. PromPeru works with travel agents to help them sell Peru. PromPeru also does things like prepare promotional commercials to boost awareness and interest in the country's attractions. They also give away Peruvian merchandise. :)

Promotion must be individualized to the customer in order for it to be effective. Promotion is a powerful tool that both of these companies are strategically using for their purposes--to increase appearances and to increase sales.