Among students of beauty marketing the way Glossier pioneered the use of content marketing for its meteoric rise holds special interest. The brand was quick to recognize the power of digital media and of photography on social platforms. It is the pictures used in the 2017 campaign that are generally considered to be the ones that helped Glossier achieved cult status.
It wasn’t the nudity.
That year a vibrant marketing campaign featured tasteful pictures of nude women that had accomplished in the areas of business and sports. In a startling twist of events, it wasn’t the nudity that turned out to be the memorable aspect of that campaign but the product photography.
Glossier founder Emily Weiss often says that large part of the brand’s success is that the company started out as an editorial enterprise that spun into a beauty company – rather than the other way around. She also tells that she doesn’t see the two businesses as much distinct from each other. And that given the expertise they already had in creating appealing content it was a natural evolution to put emphasis on branding with it.
A gold mine.
Glossier’s social media strategy encouraged customers to share their own experiences and images of the products. They received a tsunami of pictures that turned out to be a gold mine of authenticity and inspiration. Creative director Helen Steed once said that ” a lot of what I do is simply being a good translator”.
For the celebrated 2017 campaign Glossier’s product line was photographed as if they were actors on a stage. Balms and cleansers tubes placed in positions defying gravity suggesting movement and interaction. Milky Jelly and Balm Dotcom secretly tangled in alluring love affairs. The harsh light of a single flashlight reproducing the feel of the pictures taken by a paparazzi stealing private moments.
If the idea was imaginative, the execution of the concept was just brilliant. The style became an instant hit and was the prevailing look in magazines as well as social media for 2018. That year Forbes magazine referred to Glossier’s content beauty marketing as the “beauty brand for generation Instagram”.
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