Are Influencer Beauty Brands Over, or Are They Evolving?
Influencer-led beauty brands are facing public scrutiny and growing pains, but many are evolving into serious players in the skincare and makeup space.
From left to right: Piyane, founder of Nalia Skin, Susan Yara, founder of Naturium, Lauren Curtis founder of Loungeface.
After more than a decade of people monetising their online content, the influencer economy is still booming and challenging what traditional marketing and career paths can look like.
It also makes the beauty industry a very interesting space as they continue to collide - we have lots of personalities and lots of money (around $650B annual revenue in the beauty sector) thrown into the mix.
The result is more content and product reviews than ever before, as well as a truly overwhelming range of brands and products to choose from.
All of this does raise the question: How much space there really is left in the beauty space, especially from “influencer” brands?
Do they still have the sheen of a cash grab or are we seeing the beginning of legacies?
Influencer is still a dirty word
Despite the clear earning potential of working within the influencing and content creation space, the average reaction to the moniker “influencer” is still mostly negative.
As an industry it is still relatively new and widely misunderstood, as well as being vast and unpredictable.
If we were all a little more honest with ourselves, I think we would find that the derision often aimed at influencers probably comes from jealousy at the aspirational lifestyle they show online.
The perks can be very perky and whilst there is hard work involved the shiny exterior can look very different to the 9-5 so many of us find ourselves in.
It should also be acknowledged that the content creation space, especially when it comes to beauty, is predominantly female or female identifying which amplifies the attitude of it being ‘silly’ or ‘superficial’.
A 2023 report by Collabstr showed 77% of influencers identified as female.
Many content creators I know are passionate about what they do as well as being quite savvy and strategic about the business side of things, cultivating a wide range of skills at the same time as building and maintaining a community.
It doesn’t seem at all silly to me to turn something you enjoy doing into a very lucrative career option.
It then makes sense that instead of being paid to promote someone else’s product, why not sell your own?
The beauty industry is mammoth and only continuing to grow, so the sky really can be the limit.
The process of trialling hundreds, maybe even thousands of products does develop a knowledge base within the individual about what they like and what works for them.
This can make for a very solid background going into product and brand development - so yes, maybe they are actually qualified to give it a go.
If You’re “Cancelled”, Your Brand Might be Cancelled Too
Image: Left: Mikayla Nogueira founder of POV Beauty. Right: Anna Paul founder of Paullie Skin.
One of the biggest hurdles that personality-led brands face is how their individual actions directly impact the brand.
When you’ve made a point of connecting your name and face to a business and having them so intrinsically linked, you’ve biggest risk is you.
Add in a controversy and it can be the perfect storm to bring a brand to a grinding halt.
Paulie Skin
Over the last decade we have seen a wide variety of charges, ranging from reasonably superficial through to potentially criminal, derail and sometimes tank a brand.
Recently within Australia, the Anna Paul and Mikayla Testa controversy has undoubtedly affected Paullie Skin, Paul’s own beauty brand.
Once impossible to keep stocked, basically every product is very much available to buy and the brand’s social accounts haven’t posted since late March.
In this case we are talking about a situation with some very serious allegations, which we won’t discuss further here, but it is a strong example of how quickly consumers will withdraw their support when an individual reputation now has some big question marks.
Which, if we're being honest, should probably be how we approach engaging with any brand, regardless of who founded them, but the court of public opinion is especially ready to condemn influencer-led projects.
POV Beauty
We’ve especially seen this with the recent launch of POV Beauty, Mikayla Nogueira’s brand marketed as the ideal skin prep routine.
Mikayla is one of the biggest and most well known personalities in the beauty space - 20M followers across social channels - yet following the announcement there was a lot of chatter about trust.
She has been accused more than once of lying about product results in a paid piece of content, so before the products are even available to purchase, people already don’t trust what she says about them.
That stuff really does stick.
Read: the 26th journal: coloured mascaras, influencer brands and even more new products
A Note About Professionalism
It’s not just an individual’s reputation that can jeopardise a brand - the less interesting but very practical side of a business can be just as messy.
Whilst an influencer may be well positioned to develop the products, formulas, and branding, logistics such as supply chain, order fulfilment and customer service are incredibly important to a brand’s success.
Comment sections on POV beauty’s instagram are currently flooded with an equal amount of disgruntled customers who haven’t received their orders, and fans who are waiting eagerly for the brand to restock.
This highlights growing pains that businesses typically face when launching, but on a larger, more public scale.
Image: Comments from POV Beauty’s instagram comments.
Influencer brands (and new business as a whole), are often testing new supply chains, delivery partners and custom packaging - systems that are only tested en-mass after launch.
It’s the more ‘boring’ part of starting a business that is often overlooked or undervalued, especially if you don’t have a more objective business brain as part of the process.
Influencer brands in the past have battled repeat sell outs, the need to quickly grow their supply chain, audience frustration, unmet expectations in both formula and packaging, and the need to refund large portions of their customers after meeting online controversy or missing expectations.
May we all please take a second to remember the absolutely catastrophic fallout that followed Youtuber Jaclyn Hill’s lipstick launch.
Years later it is still referred to as ‘Lipstick Gate’.
Conversion is Key
Sometimes it also isn’t enough to simply have a large profile and keep your nose clean - you need to get those sales and a large part of that is making sure the community is on your side.
A very interesting case is when J-Lo launched her own brand with branding that heavily focused on olive oil - messaging that seemed to fall apart when held up against old quotes that attributed her skin results to good sleep and a healthy lifestyle.
It felt like things weren’t quite aligned.
Sure, her face and name were all over it, but it didn’t really feel like she was that involved and it just didn’t feel genuine.
Compare that to Rare Beauty and how involved Selena Gomez appears, how strongly the messaging adds up with what we know about her.
For all we know she might just step in when the photoshoot is needed and not actually get into the trenches of product development but the point is it feels like she is.
Closer to home we have our own examples, such as Lauren Curtis with her brand Loungeface or Piyane with Nalia Skin.
Read: Lauren Curtis, AKA @lozcutris, Shares Her Steps to Get Her Famous Lashes
The products, the branding, the packaging all makes sense with what we know about that person, what we identify with them, and so far, the products are also delivering the goods.
Lasting Success is Possible
All of this said, there are brands that have really carved their own path and grown beyond the individual that started them and there seem to be two core reasons for this: quality products and distance from the creator.
On the first point, it seems almost silly to point out but I think when any of us is shopping for a new product the most important thing is that it works - it delivers on claims, provides good value for money and makes us want to buy it again.
Simple, right?
The second is to actually have that little bit of distance between the founder and the brand.
A recent success story in the influencer brand space is Naturium, founded by Susan Yara that sold for a cool $355M and is well regarded in the beauty community.
Read: I Tried The Brand Dermatologists Adore - Naturium. Here’s My Thoughts.
From the start she set out with a focus on give the brand longevity and space to grow that wasn’t limited to her saying in an interview with Glory Media “The brand can have a little bit of my spirit in it, but it shouldn’t rely on my identity to survive.”
Or you can also consider Summer Fridays, which now stands on its own two feet as a well-loved brand, with many not even knowing that the two founders had their own platforms first.
Influencer-led brands are starting to grow up and longevity is definitely achievable for some - but not all.
