AUSTIN, TEXAS — It wasn’t until nearly five years after it launched that Rare Beauty, the wonder and cosmetics line founded by Selena Gomez, ran a serious ad campaign. When the hassle debuted last fall, the celebrity-led upstart was by then estimated to be price billions and already in vogue with a choosy Gen Z audience that has reshaped category trends due to apps like TikTok.
Rare Beauty’s rise is a case study in how lots of today’s buzziest brands are built: Influencer-first and reliant on fervent online followings to spread word-of-mouth somewhat than the pillars of traditional paid media. E.l.f. Cosmetics, a top brand within the vertical, had an identical path to success, with an early focus on microinfluencers to entrench a dedicated audience.
At South By Southwest (SXSW) last weekend, Rare Beauty CMO Katie Welch compared her community-oriented marketing approach to developing an enduring friendship that needs constant care and two-way communication. Trust and transparency are essential to be sure that such relationships don’t sour in an always-on digital age and as businesses enact changes like price increases, in accordance with the chief.
“The best ideas are going to come back out of your audience. Ask, listen, shape your brand around those real needs,” said Welch, a cosmetics veteran who got in on the bottom floor of Rare Beauty in 2019. “The second idea: you could have to point out up consistently. Community is just not a one-off campaign. It is a long-term commitment.”
Rare Beauty last 12 months ranked because the second most-popular beauty brand amongst teens, in accordance with Piper Sandler, landing behind E.l.f. and ahead of legacy marketers like Maybelline.
Navigating tumult
Rare Beauty, which positions itself around mental health causes, had a rollout that might easily have been hamstrung. Before it even had a product to sell, the marketer was ramping up outreach to a various group of people that could accurately represent dozens of shades of foundation. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, throwing marketing strategies and the world at large into tumult.
Rather than pump the brakes, Rare Beauty kept up communication with its followers, hosting weekly Zoom calls, dubbed Rare Chats, which have develop into a signature piece of company lore. A concrete brand purpose helped Rare Beauty navigate the storm of the worldwide health crisis, Welch explained.
“All of a sudden, our mission became more necessary than ever. We knew that we had to attach people,” she said.
Providing mental health support and addressing the loneliness epidemic amongst young people has been a mission because the brand’s inception. Gomez, a former child TV star, has been subject to public scrutiny over her looks for a long time, and desired to create a platform to encourage self-acceptance and confidence.
As with community management, Welch cautioned that purpose must be engrained in a brand’s ethos versus an auxiliary marketing tactic. Rare Beauty’s commitment to social issues and inclusivity may very well be a very important differentiator as other brands retreat from diversity, equity and inclusion attributable to political pressure.
“Brand purpose is just not only a marketing play. If you’re going to do it, you could have to commit,” said Welch. “It’s not only to generate sales or buzz. Honestly, Gen Z — your audience — will begin to see through that.”
Community in focus
Rare Chats led the brand to understand that many young consumers weren’t getting sufficient mental health resources from school or at home. Rare Beauty eventually established a Rare Beauty Mental Health Council drawing on expertise from across mental health, nonprofit and medical fields that’s now five years running, together with introducing a fund that supports 30 nonprofit organizations with grants and contributions.
In the meantime, moments of consumer connection have made the jump to the actual world. Rare Beauty hosts regular summits on mental health while Rare Chats have transitioned to in-person meetups like hikes, breathwork sessions and Sephora shopping trips. Such activations aren’t as measurable as conventional marketing tactics but keep a finger on the heart beat of the Rare Beauty fanbase.
“There’s no real KPI. It’s just, what’s the sentiment?” said Welch in response to an audience query. “Does it look like people need to be there? Is it fun?”
Rare Beauty handles just about all of its social and artistic in-house but turned to Fred & Farid Los Angeles for “Every Side of You,” its first global brand campaign and a chunk of a bigger “Love Your Rare” messaging platform. The effort, which debuted in October, shines a lightweight on the range of individuals in Rare Beauty’s community, with voiceover provided by Gomez. Media spans social, out-of-home, Sephora retail touchpoints, connected TV, influencer marketing and paid digital.
Rare Beauty has made other plays at the massive leagues: The direct-to-consumer brand mulled a sale for as much as $2 billion last 12 months before putting that process on hold, Axios reported in September. Whether Rare Beauty could preserve its deep-rooted community orientation under a bigger cosmetics group is an open query. Welch sounded confident that the business has successfully fostered long-term loyalty and pushed other brands to pursue an identical path to growing consumer favor.
“True loyalty will come from the experiences where people feel valued just beyond a purchase order. I actually imagine any brand can do that,” said Welch. “I can argue not every brand has to have a brand purpose but I do think every brand must have a community. That’s why you exist.”
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