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Trends and Insight in association withSynapse Virtual Production
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Is the Celebrity Beauty Brand in its Flop Era?

11/04/2023
Marketing & PR
London, UK
754
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In 2022 there were more than 60 celebrity beauty brands on the market - speaking to Dirt & Glory Media’s Nigel Brown and R/GA Australia’s Heather Sheen, LBB’s Zhenya Tsenzharyk investigates what the future of the category might look like


In 2022, celebrity beauty brands crossed over from rarity into ubiquity. Like mushrooms springing up after the rain, seemingly not a week went by where a new launch didn’t unexpectedly pop-up, sometimes without context or warning. At the time of writing, there are over 60 (!) celebrity beauty brands all vying for a slice of the very lucrative beauty market. And exactly how lucrative is the market right now? It increased from $483 billion in 2020 to $511 billion in 2021, with a prediction that it’ll reach $716 billion by 2025, per a report from Common Thread.

Some celebrities have been in the beauty game for a while now, capitalising on their image to bring consumers not just a taste of their aspirational lifestyles but products that couldn’t be found elsewhere. It all began, however, with the celebrity perfume craze. 

Britney Spears, JLo, Paris Hilton and Beyonce all had a fragrance to their names in the early 2000's. The idea behind celebrity fragrances was hardly a new one then; it was Elizabeth Taylor, in 1991, who ventured into the market first with ‘White Diamonds’, a fragrance that generated more than $1.5bn in sales for its maker, Elizabeth Arden, since the launch.

Still, in the 2000's the category exploded. While the fragrances were indisputable cash cows, they were far from prestige, with the price points directly aimed at teenage consumers who, at that time, were not regarded as a particularly discerning target market. The fragrances themselves were much of a muchness; typically, a sweet fruity floral scent was accompanied by a highly glamourised campaign featuring the big-name star. Having a fragrance (which countless other celebrities went on to have) was sometimes seen as a dilution of the star’s image, detracting from their craft in favour of a cash-grab. Once C and even D-list celebrities release fragrances, sales started to slow down and the A-listers stepped away, at least on the surface, from further promotion and new product launches.

The beauty category as a whole, however, continued to boom with a new focus on make-up and skincare in particular. Some celebrities joined the game in the early days, like Kylie Jenner with Kylie Cosmetics in 2015, and Rihanna with Fenty in 2017. Both brands reached a valuation of $1.2bn and $3bn respectively. It’s no wonder that other celebrities – from A-list to influencers – thought to capitalise on the success.

Some celebrities are meaningfully adding to the beauty market – there’s Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty, Hailey Bieber’s Rhode, Jonathan Van Ness’s JVN, and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley’s Rose Inc. Others appear to be entirely random. 

Did you know that Brad Pitt, Jared Leto, Scarlett Johansen, Travis Barker (of Blink 182), John Legend, Jennifer Lopez, and Naomi Osaka all have beauty lines? So do Michelle Pfeiffer, DJ Khaled, Kristen Bell, Venus Williams, Tyler, the Creator, and Harry Styles among many, many more. The ranges are split between skincare and make-up though many cross-over, with some spanning the categories of body and hair care too. 

Commenting on the sheer number of celeb beauty brands currently on the market, Heather Sheen, head of planning at R/GA Australia, says: “Just like fast fashion, some of these are simply fast brands. They utilise a fast burn business model, one that taps into a trend, saturates the market, sells fast, and finally churns.”

So, what’s the meaningful differentiator between all the beautifully photographed and packaged ranges? Trust.


Trust First

Consider that Selena Gomez’s three-year old Rare Beauty brand was launched only after Selena spent a considerable amount of time connecting with her followers on Instagram and TikTok, where she’s often seen discussing and applying products, her own and others’. She’s positioned herself not as an expert per se but a conduit for her audience; together they’re learning and discovering new recommendations together under the umbrella of self-care. Rihanna’s Fenty entered the market to address the gap of shade inclusivity, launching with an unprecedented 50 shades of foundation that cater to lightest and darkest skin tones. At the recent Super Bowl halftime show, she paused cheekily to blot her nose with one of her own products. An undeniable marketing move yet also one that organically shows her – the founder – to be interacting with her own products. 

On the other hand, let’s look at Jared Leto’s line, Twentynine Palms. The 11-piece line launched last year while Jared told Vogue that he’s “never been really interested in beauty products”, begging the question why consumers should be interested in his. Audiences might be curious how he, at 51, and Jennifer Lopez at 53, look so youthful but they’re also informed enough to realise that it’s not ‘secret’ ingredients like olive oil, as Jennifer Lopez claims in her own line of products, that keeps celebrities looking impossibly smooth-skinned.

“The world of beauty can seem like the wild west at times - who do you trust? There’s no doubt the industry feeds off broad symptoms, a lack of detail, and at times pseudo-science,” says Nigel Brown, founder of Dirt & Glory Media. “Brand advocacy has spilled over into the world of celebrities since the rise of social media, and at a big cost to transparency and an acute understanding of a product. More and more celebrities will happily promote a product when they don’t use it. Let’s be honest, the modern consumer is smart and now wise to this.” 

The old ‘I created a brand because I couldn’t find something suitable on the market’ line still touted by some rings particularly hollow when it’s possible to find high-quality products at every price range and for all skin needs. Name recognition no longer translates to sales as evidenced by the number of launched celebrity brands that failed to appear on the radar of skincare fanatics.

However, failure may be a feature, not a bug, of these shiny new brands, according to Heather, “If you start keeping score, more celebrity beauty brands fail than succeed. However, I think we need to question whether they should be viewed as failures, or success stories of brands built for purpose - to fail.”

Heather notes that many of the brands aren’t developed or even co-developed by celebrities at all, “In reality, ‘brand incubators’ develop several labels at once, and then look for celebrities to ‘partner’ with.” 

A-Frame is one such incubator which also happens to make John Legend’s Loved01 line, Naomi Osaka’s Kinlò, and Proudly by Gabrielle Union and Dwyane Wade. A-Frame’s co-founder and chief executive is reportedly conscious of the “vanity projects” entering the market, saying at A-Frame they “say ‘no’ way more than ‘yes’,” as quoted in The Financial Times. 

Thinking about the celebrity beauty category as a whole, Heather adds: "These labels aren’t built for longevity, instead they accept the realities that can exist within the category: shockingly short product life cycles, low brand loyalty, low repeat purchase, low product satisfaction, and purchases driven by impulse and novelty.”

Might the celebrity beauty line go the same way as the celebrity fragrance - damaging personal brands, instead of bolstering? “Now, more than ever, the responsibility lies with marketing directors and agencies to give sensible and pragmatic advice. Sooner rather than later brands will be called out when the proclaimed claims don’t align with the customer’s experiences. When that happens, it will be difficult for a product to recover its reputation. Beauty brands need to better police themselves and focus on authenticity,” Nigel says.

The rate at which celebrities are launching beauty brands is starting to draw ridicule though most are attracting indifference, perhaps the worst outcome of all. That’s not to say that the appetite for a celebrity-founded brand isn’t there, it’s just that consumers today demand transparency and authenticity, as Nigel notes. Celebrities can no longer pull the gloss over consumers’ eyes, relying on image and name recognition alone to shift stock units.

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