I used to meet with many brand founders in my previous role working for a large cosmetics retailer. I was sent for education seminars to meet with the brand founders or their marketing team who had come from overseas to promote the brand or a new product line. I learned a lot of interesting tips and tricks about how to get better use out of the products, I enjoyed these seminars and I also learned a lot about marketing.
Every Brand Has A Story….
A familiar theme kept emerging… the brand story. The motivation that drove the brand founder to launch their own brand to fill a gap in an already saturated multi-billion dollar industry. Some were more genuine or believable than others.
I am just not a fan of the particularly common story that I call the “sob story”. It goes like this: the founder had something terrible happen to them such as allergic reactions to EVERY skincare product and NOTHING already available could help them. So, in desperation, they were forced to develop their own line of products in order to fix their own problem and now they were passionate about helping others. This is very commonly used by the type of brand who will market as “clean skincare” without all the nasties.
My favourite story, albeit apparently true is the La Mer story. The founder, Max Huber, a physicist received burns when injured in a lab experiment and developed his own formula to treat his burns. He then observed that not only were his burns treated but there were added skincare benefits and he began to share his concoction with his friends.
This one is at least interesting. I think that other brands have been inspired by this story and a marketing company has come up with a story where a catalyst event sparked the need for their line of skincare. I can actually picture the marketing team sitting around a boardroom table dreaming up a sob story for the brand. The founders then give interviews and tour, re-telling the fable as their own.
Great Brands With Genuine Stories
I am all for brands who do things better, who developed a brand out of a passion to deliver exceptional results. Perricone MD for instance was developed by Dr Perricone who is a leading dermatologist who has his own hypothesis about anti-ageing, believing that all disease and ageing issues are related to inflammation. This makes perfect scientific sense to me and his brand utilises an anti-inflammatory approach and ingredients that are calming to the skin in order to achieve excellent results.
Kate Somerville launched her self-named brand after she had become one of Beverly Hills most popular facialists and her clients, who were among Hollywood’s A list had been asking for take-home products that they could use when they were travelling and could not come in for facials.
But the sob stories with tales of people having such outrageous skin reactions to EVERY product on the market seem so disingenuous to me. There are so many products out there and I find it hard to believe that nothing was suitable or that everything caused allergic reactions.
Coupled with that, when I read the ingredients list on the products made by these brands they are full of the exact same ingredients as every other brand. So what exactly do they think they are doing differently?
Honesty Facilitates Trust
A brand that comes to mind is Drunk Elephant. I loved this brand when we first launched it at the company that I used to work for. Out came the “allergic to everything story” and their brand philosophy is that they have a list of ingredients that they will never include in their products because they deem these ingredients as harmful.
They have fantastic products. Their Lala Retro cream is one that I always recommended to customers who had dry skin. I do not mean to disparage the brand in any way. However one of the ingredients that they had on their advertised list of harmful and that they would never use was retinolA potent derivative of vitamin A, this is a cell-communicating ingredient (and antioxidant) which instructs damaged skin cells t.... I was so disappointed to learn that they had introduced a retinolA potent derivative of vitamin A, this is a cell-communicating ingredient (and antioxidant) which instructs damaged skin cells t... product in their line. They marketed it as a type of retinolA potent derivative of vitamin A, this is a cell-communicating ingredient (and antioxidant) which instructs damaged skin cells t... that would cause less irritation but it just seemed to go against their entire brand philosophy.
I understand why brands need a marketing strategy. There is so much competition out there. But they have to keep long term trust in mind. The Drunk Elephant example really highlights this. To have a list that your customers can see that promises to never use certain ingredients and then back peddle on that breaks such trust.
If a brand wants longevity and customer loyalty, the quality of the products should speak for themselves and should attract other customers through word of mouth and great reviews.
I think that when a brand is honest and simply markets their products well by using beautiful packaging, attractive advertising campaigns or by promoting that they do things better than everyone else and use quality ingredients, that we can certainly trust them a whole lot more.
