Now Hawaiian Tropic is retiring its bikini contest, which has not been held in the United States since 2008 but has continued in Australia.
Ending the pageant underscores a shift that began when the personal care division of Energizer Holdings acquired Hawaiian Tropic in 2007.
Replacing the bikini contest is one that focuses above the neck, with a search for what the brand is calling the new face of Hawaiian Tropic. The contest, which will be held through the brand’s Facebook page, will ask contestants to fill out a character profile with the aim of, as marketing materials put it, finding the “woman who best embodies everything Hawaiian Tropic now stands for — beauty, confidence, style, enjoying the sun and keeping skin healthy.”
Facebook users will choose a winner who will get a vacation to Hawaii and be featured as a spokeswoman in an advertising campaign.
The contest will begin May 6, when advertising will be introduced on Web sites including Facebook, Pop Sugar and Just Jared. Online advertising for the contest, by Grey New York, part of WPP, asks, “Are you more than a pretty face? Prove it.”
Hawaiian Tropic, which declined to say how much the effort would cost, spent $6.1 million on advertising in 2012, according to the Kantar Media unit of WPP.
About 70 percent of Hawaiian Tropic users are women, and the company’s advertising is directed at women age 18 to 34.
“Bikini contests as a tactic just don’t resonate with our consumer and don’t fit with who the brand is now,” said Danielle Duncan, the brand manager for Hawaiian Tropic.
The familiar coconut scent of Hawaiian Tropic can have a “transportive property” when “you smell it and you feel like you’re at the beach,” Ms. Duncan said. The brand has in recent years promoted the scent and other sensory aspects along with sun protection.
Newer lines are named for qualities other than efficacy. Sheer Touch, introduced in 2011, is formulated to absorb quickly, and Silk Hydration, introduced in 2012, has additional moisturizers.
“We’re taking cues from skin care products and putting a lot of those beauty and skin care benefits into our products,” said Ms. Duncan, adding that newer hourglass-shaped packaging for the brand also is meant to evoke body lotions.
Moisturizer makers are taking cues from sun care products. Among women who use facial moisturizer, sun protection was the third most important purchasing factor, behind moisturizing and anti-aging properties, according to a survey by the NPD Group, a market research company.
Karen Grant, an NPD analyst, said that it made sense that as moisturizers and cosmetics increasingly emphasized sun protection, sun care products in turn would highlight their moisturizers.
“Hawaiian Tropic is seeing that they can’t keep touting the same benefit and that with more engaged and enlightened consumers, you have to keep moving,” Ms. Grant said. “They have to keep leveraging efficacy, but they can lead with different benefits at this point, too.”
A recent report on sun protection from Mintel echoed the sentiment.
“Added skin care benefits like antioxidants and anti-aging ingredients generate high reported interest among consumers, particularly women,” the report read. “As the lines between skin care and sun care continue to blur, it stands to reason that more sun care brands will offer skin care benefits in their products.”
As consumers increasingly heed warnings about skin cancer, imagery in Hawaiian Tropic advertising has shifted from showing deeply tanned sunbathers to showing no skin at all. Advertising uses only silhouettes of women, with the shapes filled with tropical imagery like palm trees, sun-dappled water and hibiscus flowers.
“We want you to project yourself into the silhouette,” said Fran Sheff-Mauer, a creative director at Grey who has worked on the brand since 2010. “Our point of difference is that we are about the whole woman, inside and out.”
A new print ad for Hawaiian Tropic Silk Hydration features the silhouette of a woman with a hibiscus flower in her flowing hair and a beach scene filling her form. “Protection you’ll love to put on,” says the headline for the ad, which appears in the May issues of magazines like Cosmopolitan, People and Us Weekly. The tagline reads, “The beauty of sun protection.”
Before the Hawaiian Tropic Zone in Times Square, which was owned by the Riese Organization, closed in 2010, it was sued by several women for sexual harassment or sexual assault. (“Tropic troubles grow,” declared a Daily News headline in 2009.) The licensing deal for the restaurant preceded Energizer’s acquisition of the brand, and the company said that now that Riese had closed the club, and another Hawaiian Tropic Zone it owned in Las Vegas, it would not license the name of the brand again.
The final Miss Hawaiian Tropic Australia/New Zealand crown was won by Ashiie Munro-Smith of Perth, Australia.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/23/business/media/that-hawaiian-tropic-scent-no-bikini-required.html?partner=rss&emc=rss