Can Gen-Z Beauty Brands Grow Up?

0:07Hello and welcome to The Debrief from the Business of Fashion where each week we delve into our most popular BOF professional stories with the correspondents who created them. I'm senior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young. And I'm executive editor Brian Baskin. Stickers, jelly textures, plushy mascots. The Gen Z beauty era taught brands how to win over teens on TikTok and at Sephora. But Gen Z is growing up and as the oldest in that generation approaches 30, yes, 30, they want fewer gimmicks and more formulas that work. Brands like Bubble, Starface, and Bioma have been at the forefront of Gen Z beauty, but can a brand built for teens become a cross-generational success story?

0:49For Bubble, at least, the answer somehow involves Leighton Meester. We'll get into that. To break it down, we're joined by the author of this week's piece, senior BOF beauty correspondent, Daniela Morosini. Daniela, welcome back to The Debrief. Hi, I'm here for the plushie mascots only. That's all we're going to talk about. I'm with it. The fact they're almost 30 is already stressing me out. But I want to start with before this grow up moment that we're seeing, what made Gen Z brands like Bubble, like Starface, like Bioma so popular? What was their selling point? These brands are all just so digitally native.

1:22And I think for a lot of them, the founders were actually quite young themselves. They weren't necessarily teens, but these were founded by people maybe in their late 20s, early 30s. So they were not so kind of divorced from the customer base that they were trying to reach. They were small, scrappy businesses. They had shorter product launch cycles, really savvy marketing. You know, think about the D2C boom that saw those brands like, I don't know, Bobby Parker and Away, you know, they were really quick off the mark. And so they were able to figure out something that was trending, understand the algorithm.

1:51And they also did a lot of crowdsourcing as well. Like all of these brands did a lot of kind of social listening and being really plugged into internet forums. So the brands kind of ended up being for Gen Z, almost by Gen Z, or at least by founders who were not a great deal older than them, I should say. That makes a lot of sense. Okay. So I get how something like a mascot, like the plushies fit into that, but like how do some of the other products I mentioned, like the jelly textures, the stickers, I mean, why did that take hold in this environment? I think it's a lot of it is just down to visual appeal or other kinds of sensorial appeal, right?

2:24So I don't know who I would a hundred percent credit with starting the jelly texture craze it could have been milk it might have been elf you know they had these goopy gloopy sticky things they look good in a video you see someone put that on your face and then you kind of want to try it or you want to feel it and with so many of these brands sort of really living and dying on tiktok any kind of weird sensorial point of difference was a sticking point you know i feel excuse the pun with the stickers and things like that i think people have just gotten you know like we've i don't know if we've spoken about it on the pod or if we've just written about it but like the charmification of luxury and the charmification of beauty.

2:57People just really wanting to flex the brands that they love in everything down to like adding a handbag charm or a charm to their lipstick or a sticker or a badge, you know, just anything colorful and attention grabbing. I love that you mentioned that this was like for Gen Z, by Gen Z in theory. I remember doing a story on Bubble and Shai Eisenman, the founder, talked about interviewing more than 10 ,000 Gen Zers before she launched. Did you think these brands early on always thought that they would stick with Gen Z? Was that just the entry point? Like, can you talk about their frame of mind when they were getting ready to launch these brands?

3:30I think in the last five years, it would be really hard to think of a beauty executive who hasn't wanted to talk to me about Gen Z. They were such a focus for the whole industry in the same way that, you know, Millennial Pink really took over and that was sort of a customer everybody was trying to reach across different categories. I think there was this sense that Gen Z were the ones who were putting that astronomical growth into beauty, you know, coming out of COVID, and that it was partly because they were going to use so many more products than previous generations. There was this idea that Gen Z would actually like five perfumes and they would actually like a 15-step skincare routine.

4:06So who wouldn't want to target that customer group if they're willing to spend so much money and have so many products and also, So crucially, get bored of them quite quickly because then you can sell them something else and have that routine ever expanding and growing. I guess another way to get after what I was saying there is like, did they ever say, hey, millennials, hey, Gen X, you could use this too? Was it so squarely emphasizing Gen Z that maybe other cohorts missed the message? I think it depends brand from brand. I'm sure that they would never want to feel completely exclusive. I can remember being on Starface's Instagram.

4:38This is sort of like they're best known for their acne patches. and they wouldn't exclusively have younger faces on there but they predominantly would and that just makes sense to a degree right if you try and go too broad especially with something like acne which adults absolutely get breakouts but kids get a whole lot of them it makes sense to kind of narrow it a little bit but I think also there was such a kind of maniacal focus on this cohort and that they really were going to change how everybody saw beauty and they were going to really reshape the beauty industry in their image and with their preferences and taste I think that's why there was so much focus on courting them.

5:10Do you think they succeeded? I mean, is the beauty industry different now than it was Neutrogena and all those brands that we know and love from when we were Gen Z's age? I think they have succeeded in injecting a bit of fun and play. And even if, and we'll talk about this a lot, I'm sure as the conversation goes on, I think that will remain. And some of the new formulas that have come in, like for want of a better expression, like just new delivery systems for products, different textures, also like much higher expectations for product performance. You know, people are really quick to reject a product if it doesn't perform exactly the way they want.

5:44So I think the higher expectations, both in terms of how the product performs, but also how fun it is to use, how pleasurable it is to use. I do think that will have some sort of tailwinds. Does that dopamine aesthetic that I was talking about, I'm going to stay on this all day because I'm just so, I'm so fixated on this and the jelly products, But the dopamine aesthetic of it all, those bright colors, the fun, playful packaging, does it carry a credibility tax now? Is this some of the reasons why these brands want to grow up is because it feels a little out of touch to seem so young now? Yeah.

6:15And the fact that Bubble, you know, had to put out a whole campaign kind of speaks to that, right? The fact that they put out a whole campaign trying to not justify but contextualize their branding a little bit. you know across all consumer goods we use colors fonts visuals to signal elements about the product and the brand and however subtle that might be to say who it's for who it's by and how it performs and i think broadly speaking colorful bright things we do associate with play and with silliness and youth and frivolity and if you are shopping specifically for skincare as well maybe not so much in other categories and you want results let's say you are genuinely really struggling with acne or you are seeing the first signs of aging and you want a product that you feel is going to work.

6:54I think there is just something in your, in your mind's eye or in the kind of mental cues that get fired up that might make you look at something that's, I don't know, bright yellow and is called like jelly snail hug moisturizer that might make you think, oh, this is actually, you know, this is not a serious product. I'm probably the opposite. Sorry. I have, I have like all bubble because I, maybe it's like, I have the mental issue that I think I'm 25. I don't know. Anyway, go ahead, Brian. Oh, now I'm curious, actually. I mean, Sheena, why Bubble? I mean, how did that cross generations to appeal to you?

7:27Well, I think when I was working on stories and stuff, I think I tried something that was in the office and I actually genuinely like it. And I think that once it works for you, I think you just don't, you surpass whatever the marketing is. And on a personal note, I find that a lot of the stuff that's marketed for, you know, an older demographic is too strong. Like it makes my skin break out. So I actually feel like Bubble and some of that youth. I mean, the products I don't think are for youth the way that they're marketed. Like they can be for anybody. But I find that the stuff that skews older breaks my skin out and it's a little harsh.

8:00I think price is part of that as well, because most of the Bubble products, I would say, are under$20, maybe if not even cheaper. And I think sometimes we equate price with performance and we think, well, it's too affordable to have really good results as well. And some brands like The Ordinary and The Inkey List, they have broken through a lot of that. But I do think if you are getting to that point where your specific focus is anti-aging, which is like generally associated with what, like Botox, facelifts, like expensive in-clinic procedures. I think there is probably a bit of a sense that, oh, this, I don't know,$15 serum, like it can't really be helping, right?

8:35Yeah, I can attest it does. Yes. But to that point, can brands like Bubble and Bioma and Starface, like why not just stay in the youth focused category? Like they're doing really well. Claricell and Neutrogena, for example, I feel like they've just, they've lived there. They know their demographic. They don't try to age up or down too much. Like why not do that? Yeah. And these kind of legacy brands, they have definitely ceded market share to some of these newer indies. And when we say that, but like these are still huge brands. These are still brands that you can find in every single drugstore.

9:08They are still probably most teens or tweens introduction to the beauty category. So you absolutely can do that. I think what I would dare say is perhaps that those brands are not cool. And I think some of these brands do really want to be cool and they want to be relevant. So they don't just want to be the mainstay. They don't just want to be the thing that your mom might pick up for you when you're complaining about having a spot. So I think that is it. It's hard to be both legacy and cool. It feels like a bit of a trap in a way, because I think it's a lot harder to stay cool for generation after generation than just be like, our product works, you're going to buy us and not be excited about us, but you're still going to buy us.

9:44Yeah, you have to get to a certain level of pedigree and be in the market for long enough that you can then start doing like throwback marketing and be cool again. And I actually think that's easier in fashion, right? And we've seen some fashion brands do this really well where they go into their archives and they use all those heritage cues. I think it's a lot harder in beauty. It's very oil of Olay. I feel like that's one of the brands that like my mom has been using and my like grandmother for 30, 40 years. Is there a risk of aging up then? Like, can we talk about some of the risks of you as a brand aging up and alienating your core?

10:15And then you're failing to convince your older audience at the same time. This is the catch 22 of it all. Yeah, I think this is interesting because I actually think that fragrance brands have done this quite well. So fragrance has seen a huge uptick in interest from really young shoppers. boys like as young as 10 and 11 are collecting fragrances and that's why I'm hearing. And I think a lot of those fragrance brands have done really well with just staying the course. Like Creed, for example, is apparently really popular with like 11 and 12 year olds. I haven't seen them put out a product that feels pandering to their demographic.

10:45I think they are realizing that the reason they're popular with kids is because they are a little bit inaccessible or very inaccessible because of their price point and exclusive. So I think if you tried to spread too far and do the aging up and then lose the younger customer or vice versa, it's not that you would have a credibility crisis per se, but I think you'd just lose what made you distinctive in the first place and made either one of those cohorts interested in you. Although is there another, could you kind of split the difference and basically have one product line for the kids and one for the adults?

11:19I was thinking of in your story, you talked about star face which has these stickers that like i could never imagine you know someone over 25 not because they're bad just because like the idea of like telegraphing your acne to the world would like just be anathema to anyone older i think i was gonna just gonna wear my star face sticker to the office tomorrow proven wrong but my larger point okay whether you agree with that or not is they're also introducing a balm right which i think someone who'd never heard of the stickers might look at and go, oh, that looks neat. Yeah. I mean, some brands have attempted like a full on diffusion line, right?

11:52Where they've tried to bring out a new brand or a new version of the core brand to attract like a different customer. I think like the one that I always remember is, do you guys remember when Estee Lauder created the Estee Edit? Do you remember this brand? Oh yeah. That didn't go so well. Yeah. This was their big millennial play. And I actually, I met a woman recently who was a product developer for that brand and she couldn't believe I could rattle off the names of some of my favorite products because they had great products. It wasn't a product issue. It was a marketing issue. You know, it was too on the nose.

12:23Basically, they were like, OK, the core Estee Lauder brand is not reaching millennials who were the hot young customer at the time. Let's just create this slightly newer version of it. And it wasn't product performance. It was just it didn't have that what Bubble have done, you know, going out and interviewing 10 ,000 Gen Zers or millennials and actually like really listening to them. It was too corporate. It wasn't really like in the mix with the customer.

12:46We'll be back with more of The Debrief right after this.

12:53So a lot of this is the same product being marketed a little bit differently, which brings me to my thoughts on this new Bubble ambassador, Leighton Meester. Why her? And this is their first ever. Like they're definitely signaling something, but why does Leighton help them signal that? so what Shai told me and this is the founder of bubble is that they you know tested her name against different sort of age groups and that they did some polling and basically all age groups seemed to resonate with her as really positive everyone seemed to have positive associations with her she was seen as really likable and also they they said that she has these connotations of like premium or luxury that seemed to be something that was coming up with her name quite a lot and if you're not familiar the character that she plays in gossip girl which is arguably the thing she's most famous for.

13:39It's this like very pampered, spoiled Upper East Side of Blair Waldorf. So I think that's probably where some of that comes in from. But what Shai said to me is that there is an older customer who watched Gossip Girl when it was live, when it was on TV, who knows Leighton and loves her. But then also that the clips of Gossip Girl are like going viral on TikTok and now kids are getting into it again. So that's how she has that cross-generational appeal, even though Gossip Girl hasn't been on the air for what, 15 years or more? I actually don't know when it finished. It's funny because I feel like I might be the focus group.

14:09This is all working on me. I don't know if that's a good thing or not. Yeah. I mean, that ad, I mean, it left me speechless in a way just because I, I mean, I kind of saw it and yeah, as like someone about Leighton Meester's age was like, oh, hey, like what's she been up to lately? And then I was shocked to find out that Bubbles like target Gen Z audience is also interested in her. I think it is an example, I guess, of, I'm just working this out live on air here, but I guess it is an example of what we were talking about before that you can, you can do something that touches one generation one way and another, another way, and the two don't cross over at all.

14:44And it works for everyone. I mean, I guess it's a pretty smart play. Yeah. I mean, Leighton is 39, I believe. So she's definitely not the ambassador people would have expected from a brand that also sells like a, essentially like a squishmallow version of their core product, but they clearly have a plan here. I mean, I think about 40 % of their customer base is under 25. And so that is still quite young, but I think they're looking to increase that 26 to 35 bracket, that over 46 bracket and kind of like continue to spread that out a little bit. But are they also simultaneously then trying to reach the next generation?

15:19I do think of, as I've said many times on this show, I have a 10 year old daughter And I do think of all three of these brands as like the brands you buy for her friend's birthday party, like the goodie bags and stuff. I mean, are they trying to go after older customers and younger customers at the same time? I think it is a little bit of that. You know, what comes through in the campaign that they have this kind of like tagline of radical joy. And what they're trying to convey is, hey, yeah, our packaging is really colorful, but it's not colorful because it's for kids. it's colorful because we want you to be happy when you're using these products we want to put the joy back into skincare so there's this tagline about something like pop of color outside powerhouse formula inside so i think they're kind of trying to reframe it a little bit and that can kind of go either way like that can speak to both ends of the spectrum bubble has always had clinical testing for its products it's always worked with dermatologists i just don't know that that's really come through in the branding and then the marketing until now so it'll be interesting to see how they use that piece because that would be really convincing on a customer, I don't know, over 25.

16:23Whereas for like Brian, when you're doing shopping for like birthday parties, you're probably thinking more like what's affordable, what's not going to piss off the other parents. Yeah. Bright colors and low prices. Those are the two top markers. Well, there's something else that's interesting because what I remembered about Bubble specifically always is their website tells you like ages for each of the products, which also works. It says you can use this like if you're under the age of 12 or all the way up to a baby and this is not for you if you're under the age of 12. So that's also interesting that I think they're trying to do a lot of diffusion without calling it diffusion.

17:00And I think also you know there was such a moral panic that set in with the whole Sephora tweens craze because a lot of kids were using products that were way too strong even too strong for some adults. So I think that was their way of maybe reassuring parents as well. Like, Hey, we're not one of those brands. We're not one of those brands that your kid is going to use and they're going to have some sort of horrible, horrible reaction to it. So it's like a bit of a safety buffer. I'm glad you brought up the Sephora tweens because I want to bring drunk elephant into the conversation here because it touches on so much of what we're talking about in reverse.

17:31You have the bright colors, you have the unexpected demographic crossover with all these teens getting really into a product meant for probably 40 and up, I'm guessing. And it was a total disaster for that brand, right? Like trying to be something for everyone kind of made it something for no one. I mean, they had their other issues because they also had this super viral product, these bronzing drops. I think the influencer Alex L kind of made super, super famous. And then they just couldn't keep them in stock, like really couldn't keep them in stock to the point where I think it became an issue.

18:02But yeah, I don't know that they were even trying to be for Gen Z. I think they just didn't move quickly enough or Gen Alpha even. You know, when the kids started using it, they didn't put out a statement saying, hey, don't put our super strength peel on your, you know, don't let your kid use this. You know, it just seemed to happen all too quickly for them. Is there a strategy that has proven effective for brands and beauty to age up and do it well and be successful? And what does that look like? I think Bioma is a really good example of this. And this is a brand that was just acquired very, very recently.

18:35And I think what they did differently, and again, they have the colorful packaging, they have some trending ingredients, they have some funky textures, is they went into some more premium retail kind of pretty quickly. So they weren't exclusively in kind of like Walmart and lower price retailers. They were in, for example, in the UK, they're in Space NK, which is a really premium retailer. So that just immediately introduces your brand to a slightly older audience. Last Christmas, I bought some of their products for my mom. And you know, the price point didn't feel too egregious. I mean, obviously, she's my mom.

19:05So she's going to say she likes whatever I get her but she liked the products and didn't have a reaction to opening them that felt like oh you know what is this and I think also you've got to understand you do remember that retailers really function as a marketing engine in a lot of ways for a lot of brands and just being in the right retailer or a slightly more upmarket retailer can solidify the brand positioning a little bit and we've spoken about Starface a bit but they're sort of widening their product portfolio. So away from just the acne stickers, which to Brian's point, you don't see many people over, I don't know, 30, wearing out and about in public.

19:41And they're adding in a few more products to make sure that not everything is reliant on just a single SKU that's best suited for teens. And is this also an investor play too? Like you just mentioned Bioma having a pretty successful exit. Are brands looking to entice investors by showing that, you know, quote unquote, broad appeal? Yeah, I think investors and also the companies that might want to buy some of these brands are very, very nervous about investing into a brand that doesn't have proven staying power, or it turns out to just be like a kind of flash in the pan, kind of faddy thing. And I think a really great example of this is Rode.

20:15This is one of the Gen Z beauty brands. It's a little bit skincare, a little bit makeup that has, you know, again, just had such a huge success. And I think the differential there is their marketing is really, really exceptional. And it's really cohesive, you know, everything from the product packaging, through to the names of the products, the talent that they use, of course, they have a celebrity founder. And of course, that's incredibly impactful. But like at every single touchpoint, they've communicated the brand in exactly the same way. So I think investors and you know, the elf just bought them, right?

20:45So they clearly think they have more runway to go. That's an example of a brand that's really popular with Gen Z, but it hasn't pandered to them. Although I wonder how many exits have happened because an investor said, wow, my kid's really into this. Probably more than you think. And on that note, I guess I'm curious maybe to wrap things up here. What, Daniela, do you think are the prospects for this group of brands? It doesn't just have to be the three we've been talking about. I mean, how many of them do you think are going to make that leap and have that staying power? I think it will come down to the brands that truly have replenishable products, which ones have managed to create products that are differentiated enough or at the right price point and genuinely offer unique enough results that people will continue to return to them once any, maybe the noise around the texture or the packaging has died down, who has managed to create lasting repeat custom and ingratiate themselves in their customers' lives.

21:44I mean, Sheena, You were maybe half joking at the start talking about your love of bubble. I'm serious. You should see my wardrobe. I literally use a lot of it. I think once you find a moisturizer or a serum or whatever it might be that genuinely works for you, you probably won't deviate from it. Especially if you have any kind of, I hate to say problem skin, but you're struggling with your skin in any way. So I think if the brands can actually focus on creating product that is differentiated, that is at a price point that feels accessible enough, and that's different for everybody, then just the fact that you discovered it when you were 17 doesn't mean you won't use it when you're 37, as long as it continues to outperform other things on the market.

22:26Excellent. I totally agree with you, Daniela. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for having me, guys. please be sure to check out daniella's article bubble was built on gen z now it must grow up at business of fashion.com these and other stories are available to bof professional subscribers only and you can find the links in the episode notes you've been listening to the debrief produced and edited by olivia davies and eric bria i'm sheena butler young and i'm brian baskin we'll be back next week with a new episode where we see what other products are in sheena's wardrobe thanks so much for joining us and be sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts Thank you.