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Elizabeth Arden, the cosmetics group earmarked for restructure by

parent company Unilever last week (Marketing, February 24), is to target

a younger audience with a new fragrance brand called Green Tea.

The launch will be its biggest fragrance launch and forms part of a

dollars 50m (pounds 31m) global revamp for the wider Elizabeth Arden

brand.

Green Tea will be positioned as a holistic bath, body and fragrance

range, with a focus on well-being as well as beauty. Aimed at women as

young at 16, it launches in UK stores next week and has a pounds 2m

marketing spend.

Advertising for Green Tea will be through J Walter Thompson, which

Unilever appointed to Elizabeth Arden worldwide last year. Ads break on

March 1, featuring model Amber Valletta with the strapline ’My spirit

awakens to a splash of tea’.

Media, through Initiative Media, will include women’s beauty, interior

design and lifestyle titles, as well as posters and bus sides.

There will also be a major sampling and in-store campaign handled by

brand consultant Marketplace Design.

Katherine Brown, brand manager for Elizabeth Arden, said: ’We hope it

will bring new and younger users into the brand and maybe attract girls

who would not normally visit department stores.’

The news comes as Unilever kicks off New Arden, a wider global strategy

to refresh the 90 year-old Elizabeth Arden name.

While the company will continue to use its main ’face’, model Amber

Valletta, it will also introduce older models in its ads, with

straplines such as ’Beauty is easy when you stop trying so hard’.

Unilever acquired Elizabeth Arden in 1989, but last week named it as one

of its ’underperforming businesses’. It plans to restructure the company

as part of its plans to ’create a fast growing international cosmetics

and fragrance business’.

A Unilever spokesman said that it had no plans to sell off the brand,

adding: ’Elizabeth Arden is a big brand for us and we are looking at a

structure that is right for the business.’