🔍 How Hailey Bieber Grew Rhode To 8 Figures In 6 Months.

What's up!

I’ve been living in Boston for four years. Every year I complain about how freezing the winter is here. Curiously, not this year. Nasa said 2022 was the fifth warmest year on record, and the warming trend continues. The FTC is cracking down on greenwashing(link at the end). More reasons for brands to help fight climate change, not just for marketing.

Today’s case study was written with passion in the early morning.  

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Hailey Bieber’s beauty brand Rhode launched in June 2022. Six months later, the brand is reportedly on track to hit eight figures and has attracted a waitlist of a total of 700,000 people for its products after being sold out several times.

You might think for someone with 50 million Instagram followers and tremendous influence, this is not surprising. I beg to differ. A quick google search will show you how many celebrity brands don’t have this kind of success or are even labeled as ‘cash grabs’. Insider data also tells a different story. 

According to Jackie Fast, founder of one of the most successful global sponsorship companies, the average direct conversion rate for Kardasians from one post on Instagram is merely around 0.004%. 

Based on her experience, brand awareness is what celebrities bring, brands have to do the rest of the work to convert awareness into purchases. 

In this case study, we are breaking down marketing strategies that made Rhode by Hailey Bieber an instant success. Stardom is not the only reason.

The cosmetics industry is infamously saturated. Rhode managed to stand out by owning a simple word that no other brand owns — “glaze.” 

The strategy was intentional from the start. The first image from the brand pre-launch was Hailey with a glazed donut. The word “glaze” was repetitively used throughout their marketing communications. From doing so, Rhode “burns” their way into the mind by narrowing the focus to this single word.

Everyone is interested in what is new, not what is better. 

Rhode products are good but not to the point of no substitutes. The brand overcomes the challenge by creating a new “glazed” beauty category. They are the first and the leader in the category. They would be the brand that first comes to mind when one thinks about a glazed donut look. Similar to how Pepsi entered the Cola market by owning “youth”.

“Glazed” is also a word that is especially effective given it is simple and benefit-oriented; it implies moisture, glow, and dewiness… in line with the product benefits from the brand. 

Rhode = glazed

Compared to other celebrities, Hailey Bieber is known for skincare. Even though that sets her apart already, consumers know she’s not a skincare expert or scientist. Why should they try her products?

Rhode addresses this barrier head-on. With full transparency, the brand highlighted its advisory board, experts in chemistry and dermatology, that guided their ‘initial formula to final glaze’. 

In their PR communications, Hailey also repetitively mentions the group of scientists and experts that helped the brand with market research and product development, giving customers more confidence in the products -  one step further down the marketing funnel from awareness to consideration. 

Hailey is fully invested in the brand’s product education. She’s not only the face of the brand. She’s the brand evangelist.

She created tons of quality content on how she incorporates products into her routine and the tips and tricks she found from her exclusive knowledge about the products. The gestures of how she demos her products and the words she used (“glazed”) were emulated by influencers and fans in their own content.

This ‘leading the witness’ strategy kills two birds with one stone. 

The content helped to educate the customers but also seed content ideas for people to take and share on their own social media easily, rather than having them figure it out themselves. The words spread faster.

Other brands have used a similar strategy: “break the seal” by Jones Road Beauty, “shelfie” by Glossier.

With skyrocketing demand, a brand’s quality of customer experience could deteriorate from time to time. It’s the growing pain of a startup. 

But the problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem. 

When Rhode had significant shipping delays during its Black Friday sale, instead of acting like business as usual, Rhode posted on both IG and its site that they prioritized solving this problem before everything else. They also set clear expectations on their response timeline while admitting their lack of resources & next steps. 

Proactively setting customer expectations is key to good CX. 

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• FTC updates green guides
• Don’t have the fandom like celebrities do? You just need 1000 true fans.
• An even better apology from Graza 
• Listen to Jackie Fast’s podcast episode with Dulma Altan on investing in celebrity brands & why most fail.

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That’s it for this one. What do you think of today’s case study? Hit reply and let me know your thoughts.

See you Tuesday,

Alex & Chi