Lux - Building beauty dreams - 25 years of Lux advertising in Japan

In the late 1980s, Unilever’s hair care brand Lux identified a gap in the Japanese hair care market. The only hair care brands available were conservative, family-orientated, often targeting mothers. However, with the place of women in Japanese society evolving, Lux saw the opportunity to provide hair care for these women as women, not as mothers, and created the ‘Western beauty dream’ for Japanese women. Western celebrities became a critical part of expressing the brand as symbols of a style of womanhood that represented a set of aspirational values for Japanese women to flirt with. This engendered loyalty from customers that has spanned decades, giving Lux a consistant market share despite the simultaneous onset of Japan’s recession and an avalanche of competition."Building Beauty Dreams, 25 Years of Lux Advertising in Japan"