Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty: Transforming Marketing Norms for Gen Z customers

Did you know that Gen Z is reportedly the most stressed generation?

April is Stress Awareness Month, which is dedicated to highlighting the importance of managing stress in order to take care of one’s mental health. While this is great, my personal opinion is that brands (especially those targeting younger generations of consumers) should recognize the importance of mental health all year long.

So today I want to discuss a notable example of this: Selena Gomez’s beauty brand, Rare Beauty. Launched in 2020 with the goal of “breaking down unrealistic beauty standards,” the brand’s entire backbone is centered around caring for the mental well-being of its customers and being inclusive, and in my opinion, it’s doing a much better job than most of its competitors.

Why? Well, Rare Beauty is…

A true Gen Z brand

The brand’s most important initiative is the The Rare Impact Fund, which aims to raise $100 million over the next decade to expand access to mental health services and education for young people around the world. Immediately, there’s a clear focus on their primary target, Gen Z, the most attentive generation when it comes to topics like mental health (probably because, as I’ve stated before, is the most affected one by stress factors).

The brand also features a “Comfort Club” section on their website, in partnership with mindfulness and massages studios and like Open and TheNOW, where you can find free resources on topics like:

• Yoga
• Meditation
• Self-massages

Gen Z is also socially and environmentally aware, and Rare Beauty is constantly highlighting their attention to sustainability, starting from their packaging. In fact, they have an entire webpage dedicated to this topic, where they explain what their shipper boxes are made of and how to reuse them.

Rare Beauty is both cruelty-free and vegan. Research suggests that Generation Z is more likely to choose cruelty-free cosmetic products based on a brand’s ethical production and environmental impact, rather than the old-fashioned factors like price, quality, and convenience.

Last, but not least, Rare Beauty is inclusive and transparent. The younger generation of consumers are educated and informed. They value diversity and, especially in the beauty industry, they do not support brands who don’t launch inclusive ranges of shades. Rare Beauty not only has a wide, diverse range, but even features a “Shade Finder” page to improve the customer experience.

Moreover, their products have accessible packaging. You may have noticed their distinctive cap. Well, that’s not a purely aesthetic choice; they were strategically designed because features like bottle shape, cap design, and texture influence usability for people who have hand and arm impairments.

The power of Authenticity in branding

There are many celebrity beauty brands out there, but Rare Beauty managed to rank in the top 3 most successful in a few years, just behind KylieCosmetics. In addition to this, it was the most googled celebrity beauty brand in 2023!

This might not seem surprising considering that in 2017, just a few years before launching her brand, her popularity was at an all-time high as Gomez used to be the most followed person on Instagram. However, fame doesn’t guarantee success with Gen Z, as they consider most celebrity brands a quick “cash grab“.

Now that it’s clear that they’re doing a great job at engaging consumers…

What did Rare Beauty do differently?

In my opinion, no amount of effort will matter if a brand is perceived as inauthentic, and for celebrity beauty brands, the founder’s brand reputation is key. Selena Gomez has built hers on kindness, authenticity and inclusivity; these are the same values that her brand conveys, which is why customers perceive it as authentic.

Long before launching Rare Beauty, she used her platforms to speak out for what she believed in and to stand up for what’s right. For example, in 2020, after the murder of George Floyd and the spark of conversation around police brutality in the U.S., she decided to turn over her personal Instagram account to activists and writers to speak out and educate her followers about racism for two weeks. This showed a genuine commitment to the cause and support for the value of inclusivity.

We live in a competitive market, and authenticity can be a very powerful differentiating factor as it goes beyond marketing strategies and catchy slogans; it reflects the genuine essence of a brand and its commitment to transparency and truthfulness. This can lead to stronger customer loyalty and trust, because it creates a relationship with the consumers that goes beyond a mere transaction.

DecodingTheMedia

This is particularly relevant since consumer trust is in decline. Interestingly, trust is lowest among Gen Z consumers!

How can Marketers take notes from Rare Beauty’s strategy?

Regardless of the industry or size of the company you work for, there are several lessons we can all learn from Rare Beauty’s strategy to better engage Gen Z consumers.

Let’s recap the most important ones:

• Put your money where your mouth is: invest time (and money) in initiatives that support the values you claim to believe in.
• Be Authentic First: Consumers aren’t stupid, and they’re not likely to trust you if you don’t demonstrate that your support for a cause is genuine.
• Integrate your values into everything your brand does, from the way you talk to your customers to the design of your packaging.

What about you? What do you think of Rare Beauty’s approach to Gen Z consumers?

Share your thoughts in the comments below!