You Are the Brand

Bobbi Brown: Keeping It Real

Bobbi Brown is a makeup maven—Bobbie Brown Essentials is one of the most successful brands in the cosmetic industry.When asked how she did it, Brown’s answer is a bit surprising. She says she didn’t do it with a lot of market research or a big-time advertising budget. In fact, in his book The Authentic Brand, Christopher Rosica quotes Brown as saying, “I didn’t know what marketing was. I had never really heard the word. . . . I did not have a marketing person for the first ten years in my business.” Even after achieving success, Brown wasn’t so sure she believed in intentional branding, saying, “How do you brand something? It has to be organic. I don’t understand people who think you can take something and brand it into something. It’s got to be just organic. It’s got to happen.”1 Bobbi Brown’s “just happened” description of how she branded her cosmetic company into a multimillion-dollar empire, which was ultimately bought by Estée Lauder, is an honest one. However, the fact is that, whether intentionally or unintentionally, she has worked hard to build an incredibly successful brand that is the product of very specific and crafted factors. Any person, company , or product can learn a lot from this woman who had a dream, started from scratch, and believed in herself and her product. Being Authentic I’ve known Bobbi Brown for over a decade. I remember that one of the first things I noticed about her was her passion.To this day, she believes deeply not just in her makeup products but in a philosophy about women that is deeply embedded into everything she does. Se has told me in several PBS interviews that, although cosmetics can highlight a woman’s beauty, real beauty comes from within. Brown is convinced that unless a woman feels good about 125 Bobbi Brown Keeping It Real Adubato_(Brand)_final 4/11/11 11:29 AM Page 125 herself on a personal level, there is no cosmetic product that can really show her true beauty. This philosophy makes Brown’s approach to the business of “beauty” quite unique in an industry where the “plain” woman is not considered beautiful until she is covered with makeup. It is an interesting lesson in branding that Brown’s success stands firm on her countercultural beliefs about women and beauty. Standing barely over five feet tall, Brown talks candidly about the sense of insecurity she has felt when standing alongside six-foot-tall fashion models. She knows that sense of vulnerability in women who are not externally gifted. She took that experience and those feelings and poured them into her work. She created makeup—first lipstick and then other products—that were simple and basic, that would not cover up but rather enhance innate beauty. More than the products themselves, Brown’s authentic philosophy became her brand. She stood up for the average woman who needed to feel better about herself and her appearance but was being shamed by the cosmetic industry into hiding behind “coverup.”This unique turn away from an established norm did far more for the Bobbi Brown brand than any big advertising budget could have done. Brown also believed that using her own name, “Bobbi Brown,” was critical to her success. Let’s face it. “Bobbi Brown Essentials” is a great name. In order to be a great brand it helps to have a pretty cool name. Promotion Is Not Only about Ad Dollars Brown believes that in order to build her reputation (we’ll call it her brand), she had to be the face and the image of the company.That’s why so much of her success is a product of public appearances. Says Bobbi, “I still do in-store appearances around the country about twenty times a year. . . .Women are still coming up to me and saying , ‘Oh, I brought all the girls in my office in to see you,’ or, ‘My sister brought me in,’ or ‘Here’s my Girl Scout troop to see you.’ I know how much my business relies on word of mouth.” 126 YOU ARE THE BRAND Adubato_(Brand)_final 4/11/11 11:29 AM Page 126 Brown still does not focus as much on her advertising budget as on the value of public relations. She believes that if people...