Beauty is a Beast
Key challenges facing beauty brands today
For years, an insatiable appetite for what’s new, what’s next has fueled the beauty industry. It’s exploded the category beyond the core: makeup, fragrance, skin, hair, sun and body care to now include wellness, longevity, personal care, spa, supplements and aesthetic treatments.
New brands are born every day. But fewer seem to stand the test of time. They fizzle almost as fast as they sizzle.
While opportunities remain, shifting demographics, market saturation, regional disruptions, inflation, political uncertainty, tariffs, AI adoption, retail pressures, supply chain issues, rising raw material costs, regulations, demand for product efficacy, the rise of dupes and new technologies are chilling the once-super hot beauty industry.
Leonard Lauder’s famed “Lipstick Effect” (if you can’t buy a dress, buy a lipstick) can no longer be taken for granted.
So, how do brands cut through the clutter, maintain momentum and succeed despite the chaos and uncertainty?
Where’s the white space?
How do you tame the beast?
Product and packaging excellence – yes. Appropriate pricing and distribution. Yes, yes. Community building. Of course.
But as consumers grow more selective and the market grows more saturated, there’s no substitute for true differentiation, discipline, daring. And a strong POV.
The hallmarks of a Challenger Brand.
At Insurgents, we define what makes your brand irreplaceable, ensuring clarity, desirability, competitive edge and long-term success.
We open new strategic frontiers by selecting a One Word Anchoring Theme for your brand.
1. Detonate - Brand Audit
Your Brand Anchor is your North Star – your most critical guiding concept. But finding your it can be messy. Too often it’s hiding in an accumulating mish-mash of competing ideas. We begin by blowing things up. We take your brand apart piece by piece to reveal the ONE WORD that will define your brand, deliver your promise, disrupt your industry and grow your business.
Articulate – Master Brand Positioning.
Now comes the fun part. Rebuilding. We help create a credible, compelling and consistent Brand World including Architecture, Narrative, Culture, Content and Communications with the power to burn its way into the hearts and minds of your teams, stakeholders, partners and customers so they become diehard evangelists.
Illuminate – Brand Playbook:
We design the Playbook that serves as a roadmap for all future communications including messaging, logo treatments, color palettes, typography, imagery, marketing, web design, PR and partnerships, etc.) and ensure consistency among them.
Activate – Marketing.
Time to take your message to the world. We create provocative creative, marketing and communications that increase awareness and engagement, forge deep emotional connections, deliver powerful competitive advantage and build loyalty and trust at every touchpoint. The result? Strategies that pull rather than pitch and communications filled with wit, emotion and humanity.
Core Services
Accelerate.
In a world of rapid-fire change, brands must constantly find new ways to solve authentic problems and bring their stories to life. We flood the zone with marketing strategies and campaigns that boost brand awareness (prospecting); consideration (re-targeting), conversion (purchase), retention (loyalty), advocacy (reviews) based on business goals and budget.
Anticipate.
Future-proofing is all about anticipating what’s next and developing the strategies that will help you to succeed long-term. We have our finger on the marketplace right now and a Spidey sense for where it’s headed tomorrow. This vital intel will help you have the radical readiness to evolve, seize bold, game changing opportunities that will grow your business, disrupt your industry and keep your brand vibrant, alive and relevant.
Origins
(Never stop discovering.)
“We’re not here to test the waters, we are here to make waves” Leonard Lauder told us. And that’s just what Origins did. From an early focus on wellness vs. appearance to its environmental stewardship to barrier free shopping experience to quirky names and playful language, Origins didn’t just make waves, it unleashed a tsunami that revolutionized the entire industry.
Alpha-H
(Why settle for beta beauty.)
Most clinical skincare brands rely on cold facts and high science. Rather than calling out the ingredients, features, benefits and test scores as is customary in the category, we chose to emphasize and humanize the female leadership and uniqueness of ONE word “Alpha”. We built the entire brand around the leadership of Alphas as the highest level of performance and the power of the letter A.
Estée Lauder
(Ask a woman.)
“We’re not here to test the waters, we are here to make waves” Leonard Lauder told us. And that’s just what Origins did. From an early focus on wellness vs. appearance to its environmental stewardship to barrier free shopping experience to quirky names and playful language, Origins didn’t just make waves, it unleashed a tsunami that revolutionized the entire industry.
Darphin
(The art of formulation.)
Pierre Darphin was a master skin scientist, passionate botanist, and highly skilled Kinesiotherapist. He was also a man who greatly admired women. Our three-pronged strategy captured the brand’s three equity pillars of The Art of Formulation (The unique way in which Darphin selects and blends ingredients to ensure efficacy and sensoriality), Sensory Experiences designed to make a woman feel like the most beautiful woman alive. and its Parisian Heritage.
Frederic Fekkai
(Change is in the hair.)
Frédéric Fekkai didn’t just disrupt the hair care category, he transformed entire beauty industry pushing boundaries of style. To this day, he is one of the most widely copied hair stylists of all time. If you’ve ever clipped a celebrity cut and said “I want that”, that look was likely inspired by Frédéric Fekkai. We reintroduced this branding maestro to a new generation.
Klinger Advanced Aesthetics
(How beautiful do you want to be?)
Georgette Klinger, often called the “Dean of Skincare” launched the concept of customized skin care treatment. We gave the brand a complete makeover. Renamed the company and reimagined it as a full-service med-spa and “A Place of Possibilities.”
Private Practice
(Take your skin to the next level.)
After 27 years of practicing aesthetic medicine, we helped Dr. Michele Koo take her Private Practice to the next level bringing 14.8 Instagram followers (and counting) into her skincare Koomunity.
GeoGirl
(Put the up in MakeUp.)
Walmart wanted to reach the tech-savvy, socially conscious members of Gen Z with a new beauty brand. We helped geoGIRL™ became the first complete collection of fun, informative, interactive, integrative beauty products to engage this next generation of girls.
Frequently Asked Questions
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