Glossier
Founded in 2014, Glossier has been named by Forbes as the "OG of beauty disruptors" (Mandell, 2018). The millennial beauty brand focuses on natural-looking makeup and values customer experience to its core. Using the influence of social media, Glossier is connecting with customers in a way that larger beauty companies are not, creating a loyal customer base of consumers who feel the brand is made for them and by them (Sonsev, 2018). But with an almost exclusive online presence (only 2 brick-and-mortar stores) (Glossier, 2019), Glossier's main challenge is to persuade product purchase without trying it out first.
Vision
Democratising beauty
Glossier stands for the empowerment of customers within the beauty industry.
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Its strategic vision is to become the "Nike of beauty" by creating a unique consumer community and business-to-customer relationship (Canal, 2017).
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At the heart of the B2C model is Glossier's engagement with social media which distinguishes it as a disruptor beauty brand.
Goals
The strategic direction
Glossier's primary goal is to build a customer community.
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It plans to do this through creating its own social-selling platform (Chang & Bhasin, 2018).
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Glossier will sell products through posts and customers will be encouraged to talk to each other, upload content, comment and review the products.
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The aim is to build loyalty, trust and brand-awareness in products that can't be tried-on beforehand through peer reviews.
Strategy
Execution of vision
To execute its vision, Glossier operates a B2C model which centres around its customers as “stakeholders” (Danziger, 2018).
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To engage in this manner, Glossier’s strategic direction takes them away from retailers and traditional marketing and towards social media and influencers.
Disruptor Strategy
The Five C's of Marketing
Controlling Business Channels
Glossier only sells directly through their two stores (New York and LA) or their website.
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They also stock all products in their own warehouses (US, UK and future plans for one in continental Europe) (Fernandez, 2018).
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Connecting With Customers
Glossier takes a hands-on community strategy. The company searches for highly-engaged community members through social media who already like their products.
The marketing team then personally meet with them before launch. This rapport builds traction amongst the followers of these individuals and creates a consumer base before the company enters a new market (Fernandez, 2018).
Community Conversations
Its current strategic ambition is to go one step further than traditional business-to-consumer engagement. Glossier’s aim is to build a customer community (Chang & Bhasin, 2018).
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Its focus is on connecting consumers themselves, encouraging peer-to-peer promotion, reviews and recommendations through digital platforms.
This is to follow their current word-of-mouth direction which accounts for over 70% of new customers (Chang & Bhasin, 2018). For Glossier, conversations generated between customers is a key part of product authentication.
Content Engagement & Co-Creation
Glossier's main driver of brand promotion is content engagement through its large following (1 million monthly visitors on Pinterest, 1.5 million on Instagram and 130,000 on YouTube) (Danziger, 2018).
How-to videos encourage conversations connecting company to customer and creating a community. This strong B2C relationship also allows product collaboration as consumers are engaged with earlier in the process. Meeting customer needs directly offers an instant sales-channel for product launch (Danziger, 2018).
Augmented Reality App Feature
Proposed Digital Solution
THE CHALLENGE
To compete with incumbents and other disruptor brands, Glossier needs to meet customer needs despite an absence of international stores. To keep ahead it must also address research findings that their target market (millennials) still prefer to shop in store (Donnelly & Scaff, 2013).
SOLUTION
Creating an augmented reality app allows customers to see what makeup would look like on, without having the physical product to hand. Try before you buy will remove the need for stores.
ADDED VALUE
Embedding this with social media allows customers to share stories, generating conversations and a community around product combinations pre-purchase.​ It also allows for Glossier to answer questions and personalise advice without the need for a physical location.