February 11, 2025

Advertising: Lancôme Mascara Ads Feature Betty Boop

To help introduce a new mascara, Hypnôse Star, the brand has licensed the use of the cartoon character in advertising and store displays.

A new print ad features Betty Boop, her hemline well above her garter belt and leaning up against a container of the mascara, along with the model Daria Werbowy. “Lancôme reveals the secret to showstopping eyes,” says the ad. “Betty Boop originated the look and now supermodel Daria recreates it.”

The ad is by Publicis 133 in Paris, part of the Publicis Groupe, with photography by Mario Testino. It will appear in the December issue of Harper’s Bazaar and the January issues of magazines including Elle, Glamour and People.

“Betty Boop from the beginning was very glamorous and seductive and sultry,” said Silvia Galfo, senior vice president for marketing at Lancôme, a L’Oréal brand. “And one of the iconic things that you think about are her eyes.”

Lancôme spent $97.8 million on advertising in 2011, according to the Kantar Media unit of WPP.

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Introduced by the animation pioneer Max Fleischer in 1930, Betty Boop, with her bobbed hair and short skirt, resembled flappers of the 1920s.

With Fleischer Studios in Times Square, animators drawing the character “achieved a realism of feminine motion said to have been acquired through careful observation of the exaggerated strutting of that neighborhood’s ladies of the night,” according to BettyBoop.com, a Web site produced by King Features Syndicate, the licensing agent for the character.

So provocative was Betty Boop, who in her earliest cartoons was ogled and groped by male characters, that in 1934, as moral guidelines for the film industry known as the Hays Code were being enforced, her neckline grew higher and hemline lower.

While her filmography essentially ends in 1939, except for one-offs like a cameo in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” in 1988, Betty Boop has been busy when it comes to licensing. Nearly 200 licensed Betty Boop products are sold in the United States, including clothing, jewelry, housewares, slot machines and scratch-card lottery tickets in numerous states. Almost 400 more products are licensed outside the United States.

According to the Q Scores Company, which tracks the popularity of celebrities and licensed characters, the last time consumers were polled on Betty Boop, in 2007, 90 percent of women aged 18 to 49 recognized the character, but only about 12 percent said she was one of their favorite characters — what the company calls a Q Score of 12.

In 2007, 87 percent recognized Wonder Woman, and the character had a 20 Q Score (identical to 2012 results); Miss Piggy had 98 percent recognition and a 29 Q Score. (In 2012, Miss Piggy’s recognizability is 97 percent, with a 38 Q Score.)

“The big thing they have going for them is awareness,” said Henry Schafer, executive vice president of Q Scores, referring to the Lancôme license agreement. The “emotional connection” that consumers have to Betty Boop is not as strong, he said.

But Frank Caruso, the vice president for creative at King Features Syndicate, said the wide appeal of the character was unusual. “Betty Boop is one of the only cartoon characters that both men and women get tattoos of,” he said, adding that at fan club events he has seen such tattoos on “70-year-old women and 30-year-old biker dudes.”

Charged with striking a balance between maintaining consistency with the original design of the character and regularly updating her in more modern settings, Mr. Caruso drew the original sketches for the Lancôme campaign.

Fashioning Betty Boop as a mascara spokeswoman presented a fundamental challenge. “The way Max Fleischer drew her, she has five eyelashes on the top, and four on the bottom,” Mr. Caruso said. “When you’re doing a campaign for Lancôme, who makes the best mascara in the world, you better thicken up those eyelashes.”

For the Lancôme campaign, rather than nine single lashes on each eye, Betty Boop has dozens of clusters of lashes, each cluster curling into a point.

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Among women over 18, 46 percent say they always wear mascara, more than those who wear eyeliner (40 percent) or eye shadow (35 percent), according to Mintel, a market research firm.

Hypnôse Star, with a retail price of $28, was introduced exclusively in Sephora in August, and will be sold nationally beginning Dec. 1 in department stores including Macy’s, Bloomingdales and Nordstrom. (It was introduced throughout Europe beginning in June.)

An online-only video promoting the mascara opens with Ms. Werbowy, the model, holding a script in a dressing room and struggling to say “Boop-oop-a-doop,” Betty Boop’s catchphrase, when Betty Boop strolls in, an animated character in the real-life setting.

“I’ve been in the business since black-and-white,” says Betty Boop in her high-pitched voice. “All stars have a secret: just say it with the eyes.”

Like the print ad, the video is by Publicis 133. It was written and directed by Joann Sfar, with production by Wanda Productions.

While this is the first time that Lancôme has licensed a cartoon character, it is far from a first for the cosmetics industry.

MAC, for example, has marketed collections named Wonder Woman, Miss Piggy and Venomous Villains (which features Disney characters like Cruella De Vil, from “101 Dalmatians”). Too Faced, in addition, marketed a Smurfette collection, while Maybelline marketed Hello Kitty mascara in Japan.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/business/media/lancome-mascara-ads-feature-betty-boop.html?partner=rss&emc=rss