Marketing Insight – Avon’s well-timed glow up in the saturated beauty industry

The beauty brand is currently ranked the fourth largest  beauty company in the world and has always prided its brand identity as “empowering women by providing them with earning opportunities, to be financially independent and to work from the comfort of their homes”. Despite the brand being so iconic and well-known, it is often categorised as “used by my mother” or people are aware of the brand but never consider purchasing the products. There is no doubt that the beauty industry is severely saturated and whilst Avon holds market shares and brand awareness,  it does come up against tough competition. To deal with this issue and feel more “modern and contemporary”,  Avon rebranded in 2023, focusing on “Embrace Your Power” and has implemented a multichannel digital strategy and reach wider and broader audiences, all whilst keeping its personalised face-to-face service to blend into its new yet classical image.

Media Innovation

Spreading the brand identity both virtually and physically

Avon like other big beauty brands opted to work with well-known influencers, such as beatboxer Hamza who highlighted how Avon’s products provide her with the confidence to perform. These advertisements spanned across advertisements on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, with each channel providing its own unique reach and connection to various audiences. TikTok for young trendsetting, Instagram for owning the best pool of pulling beauty data and Facebook as a connection with its Avon representatives. Using a mixture of media channels can allow brands to gain further exposure, and in Avon’s case, they targeted each individual channel accurately.

Pushing further digital strategies

Whilst the various platforms enabled Avon to share its voice, it still needed to fill the gaps of capturing new audiences and user habits from each channel  in order to push its messaging that bit further. The use of influencers and direct message ads on Messenger and WhatsApp were integrated into the campaign. Building connection was key and the voices of key opinion leaders in the beauty category are an expansion of the brand’s image. Regarding Messenger and WhatsApp advertising, Avon created a digital shoppable brochure called “Avon On”, which digitalised the whole purchasing system. The clever movement here is, it still has Avon representatives to complete the buying, so a mixture of traditional and online purchasing come together to become more inviting for broader age groups. Broadening into online shopping channels such as Amazon has allowed for growth into subscription models, generating a new revenue stream.

 In-store experience expansion

Avon not only made movements online but also opened new stores for consumers to immerse in the in-store experience.  Shops opened across Europe, America and Africa, expanding the franchise in retail. Partnering up with retail giants such as Amazon and Superdrug further increased the brands awareness and taking the omnichannel strategy from brand into conversion.

Accelerating Growth – finding beauty in the process

One of Avon’s main goals of this transformation was to meet the customers’ needs.  Leveraging various channels allowed Avon to open opportunities for more A/B Testing and product recommendations, all whilst demonstrating how vital personalisation really is.  This spans across identifying audience behaviour, building cooperation between social platforms, unearthing the most profitable consumers and targeting them directly. The physical shops were able to open successfully due to these trials and data reporting. Avon has now launched stores across 26 different countries and is able to observe trends from representatives within 5-mile radius range of Superdrug. “Finding things, reviewing quickly, getting the data and then building a strategy around it is definitely a big part of how we want our operation to unfold.” – Alex Long, Avon’s chief commercial marketing officer. The strategy and technology they have used is not complicated but comprehensive. By opening into multi online channels, it’s still on its way to prove that they are not only classical, but also contemporary, good value and understand the audience it needs to resonate with today.