World Cup highlights male personal care importance
that kicks-off this week, England's football team is taking
preparations very seriously, and that includes looking good for the
big occasion.
According to British tabloid, The Mirror, the image conscious players are reported to have placed large orders for toiletries and personal care products.
The initial shopping list for the squad is reported to include 24 cans of hair mousse, 24 bottles of shampoo, 48 bars of soap, 24 vibrating razors and 240 razor blades.
And this is only for the group stages, where the team will face Paraguay, Trinidad and Tobago, and Sweden.
England captain, David Beckham, is certainly no stranger to cosmetics and fragrances. In March 2005, Beckham, and his wife, Victoria, announced a global licensing agreement with Coty that would tie them in to the development and promotion of a series of new cosmetic and fragrance lines bearing the couple's names.
Further to this, a fragrance featuring the footballer was launched in November 2005 called David Beckham Instinct. The eau de toilette is derived from notes of grapefruit, mandarin leaf, cardamon seeds and patchouli and was said to have sold extremely well over the all-important Christmas trading period.
Beckham also signed a three-year sponsorship deal with Gillette in 2004 - the only official 'partner' of 15 at this year's World Cup that is involved in the personal care and toiletries industries.
It is not only the celebrity footballer that is taking his personal grooming seriously. A recent Datamonitor report highlighted the male market as the area of personal care where some of the biggest potential for growth still exists.
According to its research eight out of ten male consumers now believe that improving their health and appearance is important, with 45 per cent of males saying they are willing to pay more for personal care products with active ingredients.
But whereas marketing personal care products to the perception homogenous male consumer was once the order of the day, marketers are now increasingly realizing just how complex the male market is these days.
The male consumer profile, is reported to be complex, with men falling under a range of profile types, including metrosexual, retrosexual and hybrid traditional categories, and everything in between.
The cumulative television audience worldwide for the World Cup finals over the 25 match days of the competition is estimated to be over 32 bn people.
