Australian Beauty Press Release September 2005

Sydney Australia September 8th 2005

Connecting with the consumer: Leading Australian Lifestyle/Beauty site announces special preview of new online title as the consumer demand for online beauty resources increases.

The Virtualhaircare.com.au online beauty resource has been in the top 10 Lifestyle/Beauty category since 2000 (Source: Hitwise audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers) and has been successful at making an extraordinary connection with Australian female consumers. With past and current clients like Procter & Gamble, Sunbeam Australia, ACP Magazines, Fairfax owned RSVP, Goldwell Professional, Ashley and Martin, Perfume Connection, Paul Brown, Virtualhaircare.com.au is also a leading content provider. The resource provides the hair care content for ninemsn, the largest portal in Australia as well as Australia's leading independent women's sites.

It's increasingly apparent that mainstream consumer visitors seek detail about a wide variety of topics and online is where they are finding it. In the area of beauty, there are few useful sites, the majority either carrying poor quality content in the form of light-weight "beauty tips" that promote a print magazine or being corporate brochure sites that struggle to gain a consistent audience.

By publishing high-quality beauty information and pictures, sites like Virtualhaircare have gained an unsurpassed following unique to online. Not so surprising when seen from the point of view that women are interested in their grooming. Their hair and how it looks, is one of the things at the top of that list and other aspects of grooming are close behind.

As a consequence, the site generates over 100,000 independent visits a month and competes with some of the largest online campaigns in the region in terms of reach and audience. In a market where betweeen 10% and 30% of total ad budget is spent online, it is also redressing a new dilemma for brand managers and agencies with it's 300 plus pages of highly targeted information: the increasing lack of advertising inventory online, where it is difficult to purchase online space (research source Adnews: Article "Time Online Underestimated" Yaffa July 2005).

According to Adnews, 15% of all media consumption is spent online, a rate many clients and advertisers are failing to capitalise on (Google/Sensis research). The VirtualCare resources have an Australian female database of 50,000 in addition to annual visits which are over the 1 million mark, allowing marketers to plug into a ready-made and attentive audience. The resource also conducts real time market research through promotions and can place samples directly into consumers hands and had 25,000 consumers sign up for a major client promotion within a few weeks recently.

Recognising the thirst for online infomation, the resource owners have been developing www.virtualbeautycare.com.au which has an even greater scope than Virtualhaircare.com. Crossing into Cosmetic Surgery information, Fitness, Wellness as well as Beauty, early participants include the Cancer Council who have joined us as content provider recognising the resources ability to connect with the target audience.

Launch of the completed new title with all the content in place is some weeks off, but in the meantime, we invite you to come and take an early look at www.virtualbeautycare.com.au and if you have not had a chance to see it yet, the popular and long established consumer beauty resource, www.virtualhaircare.com.au

Comparitive Studies: To give scale to the uptake of beauty related sites in Australia, here are recent actual positions of a number of Australian sites and campaign sites. These are provided by respected global market research giant Alexa and are accurate in terms of reach figures.

Virtualhaircare.com.au: Consistent high audience with spikes that reflect mail shots and running campaigns. Provides constant highly targeted contact with real consumers interested in beauty and grooming. On Alexa's global site ranking scale, used by marketers across the world as a rule of thumb and accurate indicator, Virtualhaircare ranks at 189,850th

BeautyDirectory.com.au: This is excellent local resource for beauty editors. However actual consumer audience figures are very low showing there is minimal consumer participation. Marketing outcome is based on chance of a print beauty editor selecting a product for review out of the hundreds listed so this site is a print magazine research tool/PR rather than a way of advertising online and is not represented any other way. By comparison and to put some scale on the above, this site ranks 3,146,328th in the world on Alexa's global site ranking scale.

Sunsilk.com.au: Sunsilk has just run a phenomally successful online campaign to gather survey data and collect consumer details for their databases. The "Win $30,000" campaign was seen across most media and featured strongly in terms of survey respondents gathered (140,000 plus). However, as can be seen by the campaign spike and the drop in audience either side, promotional sites like these have to pay a high price to keep an audience. Alexa's global position: 189,850th however this is a temporary high ranking caused by the interest generated by the print/TVC campaign and significant spend would be needed to duplicate it. To all appearances, this is one of the most successful online campaigns we have witnessed this year in terms of objectives reached.

Pantene.com.au: Pantene/P&G puts a significant effort into online but like Sunsilk also has to pay a price to get and keep an audience. Marketing outcome is amplified by an excellent and ongoing newsletter based strategy that connects it firmly with a loyal onsumer base. Alexa global position 630,019th.

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There is little analysis of the beauty industry/online relationship and from time to time we would like to ask you if we may send useful information about online as it relates to your products.

Your contact details have been obtained either from direct contact with you, from your colleagues who have given you as the contact person or directory resources in the public domain who name you as your company representative as you have submitted that detail. However, if you don't wish to recieve periodical updates on online as it relates to beauty products please email us and put "unsubscribe VirtualCare" in the subject line. You will not be emailed more than once a month if you wish to remain on this list.

If you would like more information about the resources, please call our offices on (02) 9967-4945 or email us.

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