Beauty Branding and PR

First, Beauty products are like candy to me, I can’t get enough and I am always on the lookout for the latest skincare, scrubs, color cosmetics, bronzers, self tanners. I love to be exfoliated, bronzed, blushed and glossed. Lately I am wild about SUN self tanner for my face and body, Zorica of Malibu skincare, NARS blush in Orgasm (I use it on my cheeks and sometimes on my lips with a little clear shimmer gloss!). And Victoria’s Secret makes the best mascara, better than Maybelline or just about any other mascara brand I have ever tried (my opinion of course).

I wish I could say that when it comes to beauty public relations, the content of the product is what is most important, and to me it most certainly is. However, from my PR firms own personal first hand experience, it is all in the sizzle and the actual steak could be over cooked and loaded with gristle. The name, the packaging, the retail price point, and who is wearing the beauty product are all that seem to matter when obtaining a Lion’s share of press these days in beauty public relations.

Beauty public relations is probably, truth be told, the most fun for any publicist to do, simply because skin care, color cosmetics, hair care, you name it… makes every woman feel special and pampered. Even something as simple as buying a new scented body lotion can sometimes make you feel almost as though you have had a makeover. Add to that, a great self tanner and a new tinted lip gloss and you feel like a million bucks! Am I lying?

The drawback to purchasing any beauty products or even in publicizing beauty products is in sorting though all of the clutter. How do you do that? Whether you are a PR firm who is handling a beauty account or simply a consumer heading to your local Sephora, CVS pharmacy or department store beauty counter, every brand claims to have the best beauty line on the market and you just don’t know where to begin or where to spend your dollars. It can be overwhleming and turn something fun into a daunting task. So, I break it down as follows. Specifically speaking, my I am handling beauty public relations and promoting a beauty brand or beauty line, I break it down by product. It is not as easy to get an entire beauty or cosmetics brand noticed as it is to get one super star product noticed amongst the clutter. it is all about piece mealing by product. For example, as someone who has done the leg work I can tell you this:

Victoria’s Secret, beleive it or not, makes the best mascara
MAC makes the best lip colors, just in terms of pigmant and texture they are pretty superior
SUN, in my opinion, makes the best, most natural looking self-tanner and I recommend the SUN cream for the face neck and chest areas and their foam for the entire body application.
NARS makes incredible blush (both powder and cream/powder in a stick). And their highlighters make your skin glow. I recommend “Orgasm” powder blush and cream blush in a stick form
Eye color and eye pencils, I am a huge fan of Chanel
For those with sensitive skin look no further than Clinique. Clinique will not steer you wrong and their color cosmetics are pretty good. I actually really like their lip closses, especially berry blush.

So there you have it. I am not brand loyal! I go for the best possible beauty product. When I am doing public relations for a beauty brand I always ask to try to line and I pick out about 3 superstars out of the whole product bunch and we tout the genius of those particular products and why they are a must have in every woman’s makeup bag. If you have a beauty brand think about which product you ar emost proud of and which brand is really the anchor of the entire line. Which product did you really nurture to make it superior in the market? Once identifying your stand out product you are ready to promote it to editors, bloggers, buyers and consumers. Why do women have to have it? What beauty problem does it fix and why or how?

Beauty (PR) Public Relations and getting media exposure for a beauty brand is all about what sets a beauty brand or beauty product apart, not what makes the product fit into the fold of other beauty products that are currently on the market.

If you take a moment to think about what makes it into the news in general, it is not the norm. What makes a beauty product newsworthy? The same thing that makes any product, service or person newsworthy – something about that product that is the exception to the rule. A beauty product can be the exception to the rule because of its price point, its ingredients, packaging, customer base, owner/creator. But, there must be something about it that is different, thus making that beauty product worthy of news coverage.

The news, in general, is all about too much, too weird, too expenseive, too cheap, too pretty, too sexy, too out of reach… the news is never about run-of-the-mill. The beauty industry is never a place where you want to fit in. With every account I handle I learn just as much as the client does, and with one beauty public relations campaign in particular I remember that the retail price point and the packaging were both so over the top and ludicrous that every major media outlet as well as every minor media outlet just had to blab about how crazy and ludicrous it was. They couldn’t help themselves. the more they blabbed the more the phone rang and it just kept feeding on itself. That was a lightbulb moment for me as a publicist and believe me, I have ad many!

Many of my public relations clients throughout the years have tried to insist that I sell their steak because their steak just tastes so good, but they don’t always understand that I need to sell the sizzle, not the steak. It’s the sizzle that sells in the media. Media is not about reality. It is about fantasy and selling an image. The quality of the product will sustain the attention once that attention is achieved.