Facebook Fan Inspired make up – is YSL trying too hard?

At a first glance this is a photoshopped product. Surely YSL wouldn’t create a make up pallette for their Facebook fans with Facebook colours only? Or maybe we are witnessing a revolution of NPD ?(New Product Development – from my past world of FMCG ).

This is probably the first tactile product, let alone a beauty haute couture brand product, to ‘partner’ with a social media phenomenon in this way.

Surely there have been collaborations, but this is almost a call for desperation?

Maybe with the drop of Yves from the iconic Yves Saint Laurent comes a new era of coolness, or maybe trying too hard to look cool.

The article in Daily Life compares this product to a friend’s Mum who is trying to be ‘young’ and still attending parties in Supre dresses? Do you think this is too harsh of a comparison? I don’t know about comparing YSL to be old school, but I am not that old and I would pick YSL over other beauty brands any day because iconic becomes classic and classic doesn’t need to go out on a limb and re-gain youth audiences in such a drastic manner. Even with the GFC and social media overtaking traditional means of advertising, we don’t see Chanel creating a collection based on twitter birds….(I hope I did not just give them an idea!).

The product is called:

Pure Chromatics Devoted To Fans palette, inspired by Facebook.

It is a “declaration of love” to the YSL Facebook fans.

This pallette is going to be available on the 19th of July on the YSL Beauty’ s Facebook Page for around $60 AUD.

The fact that there are only 1,650 of these pallettes makes it a true fan product and if distributed solely through Facebook could work well, but I somehow have doubts. Feels like I will be wearing Facebook on my face if I get it…does that mean I am a fan or just a fad?

 

What do you think? Would you buy Facebook make up by prestigious brands if that becomes the new trend?