What Makeup Taught Me About Business

Or an alternate title for this post: My Fake Beauty Blog.

I like makeup. I like learning about new products, talking about them, trying and buying. 

I did a great job of limiting the buying part for a couple of years. Then I had a streak of steady paychecks from my consulting work and suddenly the pursuit of the perfect moisturizer seemed like a good hobby. I found it after a long quest through many mediocre creams, oils and balms. It is Peter Thomas Roth’s Mega Rich Intensive Anti-Aging Cellular Crème, which provides hydration for my dry-combination skin longer than any other I’ve tried.

After that I needed a new hobby – like finding the ideal matte plum lip color. Which as it turns out, is Benefit Cosmetic’s Lollitint Cheek & Lip Stain. You see how quickly this gets out of control?

Eventually I reigned it back in.

How?

I did my taxes and my checking account became as empty as my tube of Dior Addict Lipstick in Rock’n Roll 750 that I finally finished. And won’t repurchase because Dior is not worth the hype. The best thing about Dior products is feeling like a snob for using them. Like the time my friend and I got out our powder compacts at the same time and she said her Lancome was about the same as my Dior. I laughed so hard and she said I was a total snob, which I’m laughing about again as I relay it now, as if it was a compliment.

But really, Lancome powder is better than Dior’s. And Too Faced Primed & Poreless Pressed Powder is better than both of them, and is also better than the Cover FX that I’m using now because I wanted to try something new.  

Anyway, once again my Sephora problem has vanished just as the dark circles under my eyes vanish when I use Urban Decay’s Naked Skin Color Correcting Fluid.

Now I’ll have to get my makeup at Ulta – ha ha.

Just kidding! Ulta is not completely low-end. Ulta stocks It Cosmetics and Sephora doesn’t.

I just wish Ulta’s emails and circulars weren’t so stark. I hate the incongruence of reading about It Cosmetics’ Your Skin But Better CC Cream with SPF 50+ on a flimsy flyer then spending $38 to buy a tube of it. Which, by the way, although it is branded as a CC Cream, it wears like an unbelievably smooth, full coverage foundation – with SPF 50!

I also wish Ulta would stop using their orange brand colors as their main color scheme. I would like them to use their trademark orange as an accent and stick with black for the website and marketing materials. Black is the ultimate base color for cosmetic brands because it is clean and sharp and lets the products be the focus.

And…put some highlights and dimension into their flat color blocks that they use for text in their ads. Layering is the CC cream of marketing graphics, people!

I digress. And while digressing, I might as well put on a mask, like GlamGlow’s SUPERMUD Clearing Treatment. It works much better at refining pores than Murad or Origin, which soften the skin but don’t do much else. Masks are a great way to multi-task when you’re working on the computer.  

Anyway, I’ve learned a lot about business from being a cosmetics consumer.

This started years ago when I was shopping for a new perfume and didn’t know where to start. The salesperson was savvy and blunt and rolled his eyes when I picked up bottles that weren’t good matches for me. He held up a bottle of Dior’s Poison perfume and asked me who that perfume was meant for. Without even smelling it, I could see that the dark, sculpted bottle was designed to appeal to a more sophisticated woman who was older than I was at that time. The heavy, spicy scent confirmed it.

Now I automatically notice how cosmetic brands and retailers advertise themselves and their products, and think about how that matches to their target audience. That’s a useful marketing skill, but observing and discerning helps in many aspects of business.

Looking at a company’s brand and how I relate to that brand helps to evaluate work opportunities. Can I align with their mission and approach? Am I a good match with their “style” – can I “wear” their brand so that I’m representing their core values in my work?

Similarly, when individual projects are underway, I like to see if they are evolving in the same way the customers’ needs and expectations are evolving.

Another way that I’ve learned about business through makeup is by watching beauty bloggers review cosmetics and give tutorials on YouTube. Did you know that some of them are making big bucks by the ad revenue generated through viewers?

I’m not surprised. They offer value to their “customers” in very specific ways. Viewers can search for particular product reviews or tutorials – like how to color correct. Or, loyally follow their favorite personalities, like Grav3yardgirl, who has more than 6.8 million subscribers.

These bloggers talk to viewers like they’re casually telling friends their opinions of specific products and sharing their tips on techniques. They show appreciation to their viewers for watching. Some of them are get-to-the-point and others are more about entertainment. For a consumer, it is a no-pressure way to get product information before making a buying decision.

So that’s how my interest in makeup taught me to evaluate brands and apply those lessons to my own business projects. But that’s all I’ve got time for now. I’ve got to go wash off my face mask.

Tags: business lessons, makeup, spending money