Benefit Cosmetics is on the verge of launching a new product, but it won't be using a television commercial, a radio ad or huge billboards. The company, headquartered in San Francisco and owned by French multinational LVMH, doesn't use any traditional above-the-line marketing in any of its global advertising, and has no plans to.
Benefit Cosmetics executive vice president in marketing Julie Bell told AdNews doing a traditional marketing campaign wouldn’t suit the brand's DNA.
“We don't approach marketing in a traditional way, we're not a traditional brand. It's not our ethos, so for us to do traditional marketing just wouldn’t make sense,” Bell said. “It's a disruptive brand. Years and years ago we used to do traditional advertising, it didn't reach our consumer pulse point.
“We want to reach customers. A one-way engagement isn't the most fun kind of experience.”
Instead, the campaign for new product Roller Lash Mascara, both locally and abroad, will be hinged on the staples of Benefits' marketing campaigns which tend to be in-store, experiential and digital.
It may not be inventing the wheel but it's working. Last year the company hit $1bn in revenue, tripling its business in the last five years and the plan is to hit $2bn in 2019. Bell said Benefit's ability to grow will be hinged on not deviating from its DNA, which is a key and central focus on the customer.
This focus starts at the very top of product conception, said Bell, with Benefit creating products which stem from real world, customer initiated beauty dilemmas.
“What makes Benefit such a uniquely positioned brand is that everything we do is problem solution. I don't look at what the competition is doing, I only look at what we can do for our customer,” Bell said. “We create global marking initiatives after we create the product and we share them across all of the market in the world.”
In way of example, Bell said the company’s award-winning They’re Real eyeliner came from her own personal issue the shortcomings of liners on the market. During her time in Sydney this week she met a customer who lives in Bondi, and has trouble keeping her beachy look between seasons, and Bell was inspired to create a new type of beauty product.
Once those product innovations are created, Benefit continues the conversation via social media and in-store consumer experiences, rather than traditional advertising. Bell said the reason social works so well is because it acts like a global “girls locker room”
The brand's creative for social media, stores and websites is all done in house, without the use of agencies, with special care made to ensure it all matches the brand's personality and customer expectations.
“Customers tell us what to do from a product point of view and the same thing happens in social, if you just pay attention to what girls are doing the answer is in front of you,” Bell said.
“The experience, what you get, that's how you measure something. Sure you take the product home but when you take the product home, that experience of having fun that's what you leave the store with.”
While the assets created by the company's in-house agency are the same across the globe, Benefit's Australian office is able to execute the creativee in whatever way best suits the local market.
It recently launched a campaign on Instagram – the first cosmetics brand to do so in Australia – which the company said anecdotally has been “very successful”.
For its new product-led campaign for Roller-Lash Mascara in Australia, the brand is taking all of the same cues, already launched a “blind test” with notable blogger. It wouldn't be drawn on the other marketing activities in the mix, except to say it would stay true to the two-way conversation the brand is focused on.
"Laughter and fun is just a universal experience, that no matter where you live pople want to have," Bell said. "Buying makeup should be drama free."
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