Keeping up with a fast-changing beauty culture

Since 2012, we have been closely following and were actively involved in the rapidly-changing Burmese beauty sector, by working for a variety of international personal care and cosmetic brands:  from finding out how consumers with no previous experience with ‘modern’ personal care categories like deodorants could be best approached, to exploring in friendship groups how young adults engage with beauty brands online.

We've watched with a keen eye as a stream of Western, Japanese and Korean cosmetic and beauty brands flooded the Myanmar market, all the while the spread of Facebook and other international media led to the emergence of new beauty ideals in the country, resulting among other things in the slow decline of the thanaka, the all-purpose, 2000-plus-year-old Burmese cosmetic staple.