In an industry saturated with gimmicky products and celebrity endorsed brands, what can a consumer truly rely on to remedy their skin concerns? Digital marketing and virality has been the key ingredient to many beauty brand’s success, more often than not a product sells out as a result of misleading claims or celebrity endorsements.
While there has been successful examples of these high-budget marketing tools, New York-based brands stand firm on their “no-frills” marketing strategies — often emphasising a minimalistic, convenient and efficient approach to appealing to consumers. The concept of “no-frills” refers to the absence of unnecessary details and purely focusing on the basic needs.
New York is the business hub of the United States, with demanding jobs and fast-paced culture, the people of the city have gained a reputation for being highly goal-driven and prioritising efficiency. Hence, many brands follow suit with their marketing tactics due to the nature of the working environment. The concept of “no-frills” marketing highly focuses on simplicity, authenticity, direct communication with consumers.
In New York-based beauty brands adopting this method, it more suitably aligns with the fast-paced, trend-focused environment of New York. This means consumers will typically get what is marketed to them, with marketing focusing on the component, the results and ingredients included. This allows a brand to market the strengths of their product as well as the opportunity to foster relationships with a loyal customer base. LUXUO explores key marketing tactics and tools used by New York-based beauty brands to stand out.
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Minimalist Packaging and Branding
Given the highly competitive nature of the beauty industry — with a plethora of brands to choose from — most beauty brands have opt for more creative and more cost-efficient marketing solutions. Considering budget constraints, this typically entails focusing on the product itself, by ensuring each formula is up to standard and opting for more simple packaging.
This bodes well especially for the New York based demographic, as the consumer preferences tends to be highly diverse, results-driven and pragmatic. This means that this demographic tends to value authenticity and results over aesthetic appeal and virality. Brands like Milk Makeup, while it had grown massively since establishment, has still maintained the minimalistic packaging and “no-frills” branding, leveraging minimalist design to create brand identity without extravagant marketing budgets.
Their use of simple, sleek, and recognisable logo that focuses on function and quality over flashy visuals, allowing the product to speak for itself, allowing the brand to appear more reliable and authentic. Milk makeup’s branding also places significant focus on being vegan, clean and cruelty-free. This is used to appeal to consumers in the Millenial and Gen Z demographic, an audience which has been shown to make conscious purchases that align with their beliefs. Thus, with minimalistic branding and an emphasis on the brand’s core values, brands are able market themselves as socially conscious and authentic without the need for paid celebrity endorsements and flashy packaging.
Direct-to-Consumer Model
The concept of “no-frills” refers to purely focusing on the basic needs of a beauty business. In this scenario, the basic need of a beauty brand is to get their product to consumers to generate profit and market share. Hence, the use of other distribution channels through retailers is not a necessity. The elimination of middlemen and focus on e-commerce platforms is not only cost-efficient but also allows a brand to foster a more genuine relationship with consumers.
By solely using a direct to consumer model, brands have complete control over brand messaging, aesthetic appearance and have full access to consumer data. It could be argued that by distributing products through in-person shopping experiences, this is the most reliable way to ensure profits. However in this day and age, mass digital marketing and consumer engagement seems to be the formula to a successful product. When product is placed in retailers like Sephora or other multi-brand stores, the brand does not have full access to creative control, analytics or profit generated, as retailers retain a percentage of revenue.
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The direct-to-consumer channel allows a brand to utilise transparency in pricing, sourcing of ingredients and product education to resonate with potential consumers. Billion-dollar New York-based beauty favourite Glossier is the perfect success story of the direct-to-consumer channel.
Founder Emily Weiss has cultivated a strong cult following through the brand’s distinct aesthetic, organic social media presence and dedication to fulfilling consumer needs. Glossier’s back-to-basics approach started with the direct and intimate consumer relationships, as per Forbes.
Through the direct-to-consumer channel, Glossier was able to get a better understanding of what their consumers want, to truly understand who their target audience is. This then allowed the brand to create social media content, in curating a distinct brand aesthetic and ample user-generated-content which validates and authenticates the company’s products and posts. This content then, generates conversations, relationships and loyalty. Therefore, through the direct-to-consumer channels Glossier has been able to more authentically engage with consumers and gain a better understanding of their wants and needs to further sales without the need for a middleman retailer.
Science-backed Formulas
When it comes to appealing to mass markets, efficiency, convenience and effectiveness are the key factors when assessing needs of a regular consumer. Consumers are constantly on the search for a product that is proven to work. The beauty industry is infamous for marketing misleading claims and gimmicky products to garner mass attention from the digital audience, therein lies the allure of science-backed formulas.
New York-based brand and apothecary Kiehl’s is a great example of how science-backed formulas can bring major success and a loyal customer base. The brand started out as a single pharmacy in 1851, operating out of Manhattan — they specialised in beauty products formulated based on scientific research and visible results. While Kiehl’s is a massively successful brand, with over 250 retail stores worldwide, they still maintain a somewhat “no-frills” approach to marketing in placing focus on customer relationships and effective formulas.
In such a competitive industry, Kiehl’s has stood out with their science-formulated products and powerful consumer relationships. The brand’s most utilised marketing tool is the focus on what the product can achieve and how reliable it is. With the brand logo and the words “dermatologist solutions” placed front and centre, a consumer is already given the impression that the product has been approved by experts and is therefore reliable and worth purchasing.
The “no-frills” approach in having a product endorse by industry experts and scientists instead of celebrities, gives an impression of reliability and authenticity from the get-go. Additionally, consumers are given a sense of safety, due to the fact that the products are formulated with the expertise of dermatologists, they are more compelled to purchase the product without further research. Kiehl’s has also been successful in fostering loyal consumer relationships in allowing the strength of their formulas to market themselves. In clearly stating the product ingredients and the intended use, consumers are likely to remain loyal to a brand that prioritises the fulfilment of a skin concern. Therefore, through Kiehl’s science-backed and dermatologist-formulated products, consumers have remained loyal and compelled to purchase, due to the efficiency and reliability associated with these terms.
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In conclusion, the reasons behind the success of the “no-frills” approach of New York based brands is the prioritisation of the basic necessities of a business, in allowing brands to focus on consumer needs and the product itself. In foregoing flashy packaging and celebrity endorsements, these brands have been able to invest more into the factors that drive a loyal customer base — research and development as well as fostering a genuine connection with consumers through engagement.
At the end of the day, what consumers really need is a product that achieves the intended goal. Thus with the “no-frills” approach, brands are able to appeal to the audience through the strengths of the product, which is a more reliable and authentic way to drive sales.
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