Between the two writers of the Carnage, one of them is obsessed with Glossier. Yeah, it’s ya girl, Jordyn. (Shout out to “Boy Brow” for changing my eyebrow game forever.)
Since its 2014 launch, the brand has evolved into a digital marketing machine. And it all started when Glossier’s founder and CEO, Emily Weiss turned her blog, Into the Gloss, into a brand that continues to disrupt the beauty industry as we know it.
Today’s Read is showing you exactly how Glossier grew from that insightful beauty blog to a content-first company that’s rewriting the brand building playbook. One-part story time, one-part marketing takeaways.
Let’s start with a little background on Glossier:
In 2010, Weiss launched Into the Gloss, which demystified many aspects of the beauty industry. Before our current era of YouTube vloggers and the “Insta-famous,” the $250-billion industry wasn’t so accessible. There was a huge need for real experiences shared by real people. Into the Gloss focused on dismantling the illusion of perfection by featuring celebrity interviews and product reviews. The result was a site that brought a vulnerability to beauty routines and an intimate connection with celebrities and “beauty bosses.”
What Makes Glossier So Successful?
Aside from turning the idea of the beauty routine on its head, Glossier has applied some clear strategies to grow its beauty brand into one of the best on Instagram. Here are just a few:
- Get customers to connect with your brand by association with other everyday objects. The brand’s use of its signature washed-out pink, dubbed “Glossier Pink” has become so iconic, that fans use the #glossierpink hashtag when they see the color elsewhere.
- Use your products as your content. Customers buy the products, photograph them (or photograph themselves using them or the result of using them), then share them on social media. To further encourage this kind of engagement, shipments come with sheets of branded stickers. Not to mention, the logo and packaging are highly photogenic.
- Encourage customers to use branded hashtags for a shot at getting featured. We should all know the importance of hashtag strategy by now. Hashtags make it easy for fans to find and share content. Plus, it helps you and your team find the best user-generated content.
- Leverage user-generated content of celebrities and regular people. The Glossier team actually scrolls through thousands of tagged photos to feature their next “real girl” models. The team also comments on all tagged photos, further revealing to their fans that Glossier engages with customer photos. This, of course, strengthens the inclusivity and realness of their community.
More Glossier-inspired strategies ahead.
