Branding in a Fishbowl: Makeup artists step up
This article, It's Your Makeup Artist's Autograph I Want, in the New York Times caught my eye.
The story, about the growing celebrity of makeup artists, demonstrates that we're long past Andy Warhol's maxim of everyone having 15 minutes of personal fame... (it's up to at least a half an hour at this point). This is the era of the personal brand, where the personalities of the people behind the products are just as integral to the marketing of a brand as the product itself.
Now, it's unclear whether the trend discussed in this story is really a New York and Los Angeles phenomenon, and if women in Kansas and Ohio are also focused in on the doings of Pat McGrath (shown here with a model), but it does further the notion of promoting personality. With all the blogs, websites, pod-casts and video stations devoted to the minutia of every market segment (cosmetics being carefully documented with each product roll-out and spokes-model hiring) it's easy to see the wave of things to come.
As a publicist working with consumer brands like beauty, and baby, I have always felt that product comes first. Package design, market positioning, and product performance are keys to successful branding - however in this day and age a charismatic CEO helps the effort immensely. Blame it on the paparazzi and our fascination with the doings of celebrities when they're off the clock. It's gotten to the point that even snaps of Jennifer Aniston at the grocery store have grown tedious. We now want insight into everyone's personal lives ... there's more and more swimmers inside the fishbowl and fewer of us benignly watching from a safe distance. Fantastic looks aren't a requirement as they were some years ago for getting ink and airtime. Being knowledgeable, speaking well on camera, and the ability to tell a joke go just as far these days.
Call it hyper-market-democratization, Fishbowl Marketing, or Deep Branding....it sure livens things up!
