Bobbi Brown Marketing Campaign

Bobbi Brown has three new product ideas, a line of anti-aging products, a virtual makeup feature, and beauty on the wheel. For these, the most comprehensive marketing campaign will need to be for the anti-aging line, as this is the idea with the most revenue potential. There are millions of customers interested in anti-aging products; the market is huge. This market also dovetails nicely with Bobbi Brown's existing core product (makeup) and its broad target audience. This marketing campaign will touch on all of the elements of the marketing mix. The anti-aging market overall is estimated to be worth $292 billion worldwide and the number of potential customers is expected to double by 2050, so the slice that Bobbi Brown is seeking to capture will also be worth several billion in total (A4M, 2014). Specifically to cosmetics, the market size is still $122 billion (PR Web, 2014) This means that the marketing campaign can be quite comprehensive in nature, especially given the relatively high markups in the makeup industry and the fact that distribution is going to piggyback on the existing Bobbi Brown distribution networks.

Tagline

Every good marketing campaign is built around a catchy slogan or tagline. The best of them, such as Nike's Just do it end up being worth billions to their companies, and are used for decades. Most taglines have a shorter shelflife, however. The key to a good tagline is that it needs to do three things. The first is that they convey brand attributes. They must also convey something meaningful to the consumer, and they need to be memorable. For Bobbi Brown, the slogan needs to embody the company's mission of delivering innovative, high quality cosmetics to a broad audience. The slogan should also means something to the consumer. What does the consumer of anti-aging products want? You have two choices here. The first is that you can sell the product attributes -- it makes you look younger, etc., - and the second is that you can sell the product benefits. If we look at a list of the best taglines and slogans, they use a lot of different approaches, but they are all catchy (Voices.com, 2014).

So what are the benefits of anti-aging makeup? The benefits to the customer are feeling younger, enjoying the privileges that come with looking younger, high self-confidence and this can be extrapolated to a promise of an overall improvement in one's self-image and therefore more success. Playing a little bit on the old Maybelline message, the slogan for Bobbi Brown will be The Secret of My Success. This slogan conveys a few different things. First, the slogan puts the customer in a position of thinking about themselves as successful. The second is that it equates the makeup with this higher level of self-confidence and success. The third is that it adds an element of mystery -- this is where the Maybelline idea was incorporated. Others will see a person who is successful and confident, looking younger than their years, and wonder why that is. The idea of course is that the user of Bobbi Brown anti-aging products will have that aura of mystery about them, but it is just a secret that is available to everybody. It's a proven, effective way of marketing cosmetics, but adapted for the anti-aging context. Even better, it is catchy, and even though Bobbi Brown has a broad target market, it can be applied to anybody within that target market. This avoids the obvious peril that anti-aging slogans normally have in that they limit their market to older people. The Secret of My Success avoids that.

Price

The price point offered by the anti-aging products on the market will in part dictate the price point offered by Bobbi Brown's line of anti-aging products. The prices will be in line with the pricing strategy of Bobbi Brown as well. The company targets a broad, mainstream market, and does so with reasonable pricing on its products. It will be...

There will need to be a premium for these, because anti-aging products add value over normal cosmetics and creams. Furthermore, anti-aging products will typically have higher ingredient costs. For Bobbi Brown, the regular product cost for an equivalent product plus a premium for the anti-aging features should be sufficient to ensure that the anti-aging line fits well within the competitive environment for such products. With such a huge market, competition is intense, so Bobbi Brown does need to ensure that its pricing fits within the same niche that Bobbi Brown already operates in, in order to ensure consistency across the brand.
Place

The distribution element of the marketing is relatively simple because this product will piggyback on the existing distribution systems. Bobbi Brown has its own stores, as well as distribution through department stores as well, since the brand is owned by Estee Lauder and therefore has substantial distribution access. It is unlikely that the company will open up new distribution channels for this line.

Promotion

The promotional element of the new line launch is the most important. The first step is to determine the budget, which should be roughly aligned with the sales that are expected from the promotional plan. In this case, Bobbi Brown has tremendous financial resources and this product is targeting a large market, so the company can utilize everything up to and including television in order to promote this new line. This is what is recommended. There are three components to the marketing campaign -- television, print and digital. Television will require ads to be produced that convey both the strength of the Bobbi Brown name and the products. They can be designed to feature beautiful women of all ages, highlighting their successes and then ending with the tagline. For example, an ad could tell the story of a successful female entrepreneur -- Ms. Brown herself even -- including some scenarios where she displays her self-confidence and strength. Such scenarios present an image of what the end customer wants to be, creating as aspirational aspect to the product -- the customer should equate that high level of happiness with the Bobbi Brown brand and the anti-aging product line-up. While television is expensive, it has tremendous reach and it provides the best opportunity to convey the different elements of the strategy, and it is certainly the best way to establish the tagline in the public consciousness (Richards, 2014). The television campaign should run for a year at least.

Print ads will convey the same things. It is necessary to use high profile print only, preferably magazines. Magazines are best because the ads are going to be glossy, and they are often specifically targeted at women, whereas something like a newspaper will have a lot of female readers and the lack of glossy pages will reduce the ability of the ad to convey the beauty message. The print campaign should run for at least one year, and will serve as support for the television campaign.

The online component of the marketing campaign is probably going to be the most cost effective, but it might have a reach too small for this product line launch. That said, Bobbi Brown has extensive social media reach already, and that can be leveraged, using the existing brand power to promote the new lineup. It is worth noting that even baby boomers are active on social media, so if they are forming the core target market for the anti-aging line, there is still tremendous potential to reach them via social media (Sestili, 2014). Contests and promotions can be used to build interest in the product via social media.

Measures and Objectives

Obviously the campaign is going to ultimately be measured by the sales, but there are other measures as well that will…