Rare Beauty: the story behind the success of Selena Gomez’s make up brand - Katie Welch

24:58And we did just that every week for most of the quarantine. We had a Zoom call with different members of what is now a very strong, robust, fair beauty community. And they told us things. We got to know them. And like that's – to your point about talking about not being able to find your people or see people who look like you or don't look like you or celebrate who you are. We were starting to do that in these Zoom chats. And that was fun. That was meaningful. And Selena would join them. And oh my god, when she would join and everyone in the Zoom would just be like, wah. But she wouldn't want to talk about her.

25:36They would always ask her questions and she would ask them questions. And that was what was so meaningful because then they said, you hear us. You see us. It was very, very sweet. And that informed so much of our strategy, so much of our community strategy, so much of our rare impact strategy. Because when you think about marketing today, you have to be of service to your community or to whomever you're selling a product or doing whatever you want your target audience to do action. And so that was able to really inform us. So not only during that time frame were we able to create these authentic assets and storytell about the products, but we also got to really know our community.

26:12So that truly I can say now that we are a brand that was created with our community, not just for our community. Because I think a lot of brands say that and they throw around the word. It's very popular to throw around the word community, which is great. But I can say that Rare Beauty really did it authentically. Makes a lot of sense that. Yeah. And the role of social media has been huge, hasn't it? I mean, the way you've exploded in TikTok and in Instagram. What's been, I mean, obviously having Selena must be an enormous asset and she's got an incredible following herself. But what's been the secret to using those channels to build the brand and get awareness?

26:47Don't let the standards of perfection hold you back in that realm either. You have to understand these channels and understand how they work, what goes viral, what doesn't. Obviously, you cannot plan for a viral video. We all know that. And man, does my team hate when anyone uses the V word. But you have to have an understanding of that community. Who are the people talking about beauty? Who's driving the beauty conversation? What are the trends to be able to have success of any kind, to have engagement? And then you have to be a little fearless to be able to say, all right, test it. Fine. It'll work.

27:27You think. And if it doesn't, it doesn't. Also, it's just a video. No, it's not – it's just a TikTok, which I love. But like you have to be creative. You have to be curious. You have to stay on top of trends and then figure out how you can interpret your brand for that platform. Now, you do have to understand your brand so clearly. You have to understand products, your product and your product point of difference so clearly. But you can't force feed the message. But if you know that your product does X, Y, Z or your brand stands for this, then how do you take those messages and deliver it to those mediums in a way that works for that medium?

28:05But it takes time and trust. I have a lot of trust in my team that – I mean there's something that they do with a plastic dollhouse. I don't even know. Fine. They're putting googly eyes on blushes. Fine. you let them do it. Now we're sat here in Salinas office, which is great. One thing that is absolutely beautiful and is exactly how I'd imagine it to be. It just feels like the brand. But you can tell she's really involved in what goes on. Is that true? We've got loads of post-its and lots of products all over the place and it looks amazing as well. How involved does she get in the marketing of the brand itself?

28:45She's so intrinsically linked. She works really closely with product development on bringing the products to market and testing the products. And she'll have an idea for a product and then call Joyce Kim, who's our chief product officer, and they will bring it to life. She works very closely with Elise Cohen, who runs our social impact initiative. She runs Rare Impact and the Rare Impact Fund. She's very passionate about the difference that we're able to make and the impact to giving back. And then for marketing, she works closely with not only me, but with our creative director on campaigns. We just shot a campaign last week on Friday, actually, so I just saw her.

29:24So not only on the campaign direction, but who our photographer is, the styling, the theme, all of that. So she'll be very closely involved in that and then work super closely with my team on social. Because what I love about Celine is she understands social media. Yeah, you've got the world expert at your disposal, right? I remember we were at dinner or something. one this is and she had just posted two different videos and she was like this is so interesting why is this one getting more traction than this one so she i don't know she's she's she's funny and that she really pays attention to everything she's a smart smart person and what what's the secret to getting a product launch right because you launch so many i mean it's the amount of i mean in the industry you're in the amount of new products innovation that happens all the time and you know the trends in terms of different products that happen and i'm just listening to my daughters talk about it you know there's so much isn't it and it's so things become hot all the time so how do you plan for this and how do you kind of what's the secret to getting uh getting it right that's the hardest part is that we it is it is where beauty moves at such a fast pace and so we have since since september of 2020 we have since rolled out to almost every sephora globally um We're in about 36 markets, and then we're in Space NK in addition to Sephora in the UK.

30:43We launch maybe four collections a year, typically. Most brands at Sephora do the same. And there are 360 launches. And so not only – and we're doing it all from El Segundo, California. I have – one member of my team is in Paris, and so he works closely with the Sephora Global and Sephora EU teams over there. But other than that, it's all happening here. And the most important thing is communication. We're constantly evolving the way the team talks to one another to make sure that everyone is informed because things do change. Launch dates, product points of difference, features and benefits. It changes daily.

31:25So I think what I have learned is the importance of communication, over-communicating. I think you can never over-communicate, overthink, or over-prepare enough. Maybe makes my team a little crazy. Sorry. But you have to. You have to. And I think back to understanding your product's point of difference and making sure that everyone is on the same page because everyone has to sort of hit the ground running and you do have to trust ultimately that your team knows what they're doing. So the more that everyone is aligned on the same page of the product point of difference, the brand point of view, they should be able to hit the ground running.

31:59And you just have to trust and build up that trust with your team so that they can do what they do best. I understand TikTok. I understand Reels. I understand social. I'm not coming up with the best ideas for it. They do. But if I can arm them with the tools so that they can come up with the best thing, that's what's going to work. Otherwise, I mean, you could work 24 hours a day. We already work seven days a week. I can't do 24-7. It's too hard. Yeah. Because the to do list is never like there's always going to be another creator. There's always going to be another product to support because it launched just because it launched four years ago doesn't mean you still can't you have you can just let it like launch it and leave it.

32:35You still have to talk about those. There's always going to be another moment to do a social post or another moment to comment to a response to something. There's always going to be another market that wants a meeting about something. So your to-do list never ends. So you have to prioritize and over-communicate. I was going to say, because you've gone in five years from nothing to, I guess, one of the U.S.'s fastest growing brands. Oh, man. And you scaled it massively. Sweating. How do you cope with the scale-up challenge? As you say, the to-do list is impossible, right? There's no end to what you could end up trying to do.

33:12You know, you're not in it at all. It's not me. There's a massive team. And we're all in it together. And I really, truly am amazed at this team. Few people have left. So as a lot of people have been since the beginning, all levels, all departments. So we've gotten in a groove of really working well together. And people aren't afraid to speak up. Like I think that's the other thing. We have a really well-oiled, still working on that. I think that can always be improved. But we really work well together. People aren't afraid to speak up. People aren't afraid to question. And that really is important because, oh, man, there's some famous saying of like working together, going faster.

33:54I don't know. But that's what it is, is that the team really works well together. And that is something that I constantly am trying to improve. Because, you know, we're raised as marketers to be strong marketers. We're not always raised to be strong managers. And we can always be better. And, you know, sometimes the chief marketing world – it's funny. I taught, there's a woman on my team and she said to me, I want to be you one day. I want to be chief marketing officer. I'm like, I'm in Zoom calls all day long. You know, and it's like sometimes you're just, you're doing human resources things all day long or planning or prioritizing.

34:30It's like, I'm not actually in the work as much. I know you can't skip all those levels and go straight to CMO. First of all, I need your talented brain on like marketing director, marketing VP, because that's where a lot of the creative work is happening, which is funny. So it's, I think to move that fast at scale, you have to have a well-oiled machine, a team that works really well together. And hopefully we have that. Often say to people, like when they say, oh, what is it like being a CMO? And they kind of assume that you're like the most senior marketer doing the marketing. And I'm like, uh-uh.

35:03I said the four Ps of marketing when you're a CMO are completely different, right? You know, it's politics, persuasion, people, and planning, right? basically it's not marketing it's managing other people and the politics around it yeah getting things approved yeah all that kind of stuff and that's a very different skill set the people in the planning doing the marketing people in the planning and it's funny because i have a handful of team members that i've worked with for a while and so we kind of think on the same page but i've had to work on myself to to become a better planner because if there are people that you've worked with for so long you kind of speak the same the same language and you can say okay remember and we did X, Y, Z.

35:39Let's go do that. But not everyone knows what that is. So of those four Ps, people in planning, I think in my opinion are the most important because you can never over plan. At the same time, it's like the best way to be agile and to like react to what's happening in popular culture and be able to turn things around quickly is if you have a strong plan because all the other stuff that's keeping the business going, if that's not locked and loaded, then you don't have the ability to sort of say, oh shit, we got to do this instead. That's a pretty perspective. I've not thought about it like that.

36:09Being really well planned then gives you the opportunity. Then gives you the opportunity. It's like, wow, there's a great opportunity. This shade of liquid blush is going viral on TikTok. What can we do? Okay, let's call Sephora. Let's see if we can get an email blast. Let's do a bundle on rarebeauty.com. Let's see if Selena wants to do some content. Let's do, I don't know, do events at Sephora with the beauty advisors. If we are so underwater planning a launch that was scheduled but we're behind or something, you can't. You can't react. And that's the thing about marketing today is that it is happening.

36:40I mean, everyone says it's happening at the speed of culture. It's not bullshit. It really is happening at the speed of culture. So how do you be a brand that can respond to the speed of culture while keeping the day-to-day business intact and moving forward? And so planning and people is the most important part of that, the only way you can do that. What's been the biggest challenge for you personally, would you say, in the last – Personally? Yeah. Yeah, because you've worked on some pretty big successful businesses. You know, you talk about Unleaver Bliss, well-established. This is like being on a rocket ship, isn't it?

37:13Every day is different. You're never prepared for this. You know, we try to be as prepared as possible, but man, there's not a playbook. Because there's things that are happening that you've never been through. And you've certainly never been through at this scale or with this founder or with anything. So you do have to stay on your toes every single day. and that's not easy. It's not. It's fun. I'm fortunate. I feel so grateful and lucky. I love it. I love the team. I love Selena. I love the products. I do feel super, super grateful. But it's hard. It's a hard job. It is, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah.

37:48What else has been hard? The pace. I think the pace has been tough on everyone. But we have the team intact to do it. And so it is the planning and the over-communicating. I started today. We're doing these daily stand-ups for the whole team because things are moving so fast. I just wanted to make sure that everyone knew. So it's like high school announcements. But internal communication, oddly, that's your first job, actually. Yeah, right. Internal communication. Right, exactly. But that's so important, isn't it, that everyone knows what their role is. Everyone knows what's going on. You know, regular communication.

38:24It's something I've learned. I try my best. And I hope that my direct report and their direct reports, like that everyone needs to understand what their role is. Because it's like an orchestra. Every single one, every single person is playing a role, is playing an instrument. And if you're not all playing in sync at the same time, you're not going to make beautiful music. But when you are, it's powerful. So like even if you're playing the tiny little flute, what is it, piccolo or something, like the tiniest little flute, and you think I just got the little flute, that flute is still so important.

38:57and they have i think people have to see their role in the total team and their role in the total business because everyone wants to feel like they're contributing and everyone is contributing but you have to take the time to explain that to people and understand explain to them what their role is what the business is what the objectives of not only the marketing team but the total companies will be so that people feel connected well i mean one thing i think that works in your favor particularly is it's such a clear vision of the difference you want to make and the focus on mental health as well yes i mean that really helps galvanize people and make them feel like we're part of something like as easy talks about hearing is and we try to to reflect everything that we do externally internally as well all of our team members are trained in mental health first aid we do mental health fridays we have a slew of different um employee benefits around mental health as well as for instance we have something called the rare beauty mental health Council.

39:52These are individuals within academia, within nonprofit, the medical field, mental health, certainly, all of whom advise us on our mental health strategy. Co-create content. Everything that we heard from back in those rare chats, those Zoom chats, we heard from the community that they wanted to hear trusted sources within mental health, and they weren't getting those, having those conversations or hearing about them in school or at home. So we created this so that we could point our community into the direction of a trusted resource. But in addition, we'll do things with them for our own team members.

40:25So whether there's Zoom lunch and learns for one of the mental health council members or even a grantee so that we can learn more about the grantees that the Rare Impact Fund donates to and makes a difference with. And that's been really meaningful as well. You talked internally there. What about externally in the community? You know, the first like 20 ,000 people that were, you know, queuing up to find out about how have you evolved that community over the last few years? Presumably that's got much, much bigger, isn't it, since then? Yeah, especially as we've grown around the world. And when we show up in – so whether we're launching in a market or we're just – whether we're even just doing a visit to meet with the local Sephora team, like the marketing team.

41:03My team will do community events and we'll do meetups, whether you're in Paris or Milan or Wichita. Like, you know, anywhere. It doesn't matter. There's community members everywhere. So what's been really fun is seeing, meeting the people behind the handles and their names and, like, getting to know who they are and, like, rec seeing them in person. It's really fun. It's sort of wild. We did an event in the UK in London with Space NK and some of the community members I got to meet. And it was like, oh, my God, of course I know who you are. It's wild. It's fun. So that was one thing. And then another thing that we do is we work with TYB, which is a digital platform.

41:43And that community – it's a digital community engagement loyalty platform where you can collect digital collectibles around the brand. And there's chat rooms and there's ways to redeem some of the points that you can acquire by sort of playing different games. And you can redeem them on rarebeauty.com. Anyway, this sort of platform, we have about 80 ,000 members. So we've grown that community. Beyond our social channels, which I think are about maybe 12 million across all when you add up all the channels. It's incredible, isn't it? Yeah, the amount of followers you've got in engagement. Yeah, we just hit 8 million on Instagram.

42:21And of course then you've got Selena's own channels as well, haven't you? Yep. But that's her. I mean, we don't touch that. That's all. That's her personal account. So what's coming next for the brand? Where do you go from here? We just launched our Soft Pinch Liquid Contour. So I'm actually headed to New York this week. We're doing a big master class for our community in New York, which will be fun. And then we just have a slew of events coming up and some more product launches. But I can't say. It's all very top secret. It's all very top secret. Was I too negative that the job is so hard? No, because it is.

42:53And I think that's the thing that's really interesting is the different skill set when you're an entrepreneur in a startup to make things happen. compared to in a big corporate job, you're kind of managing resources, you're shuffling things around. Call the agency, do the thing. Oh, no. But it doesn't happen unless you do it, right, in a startup. So, you know, I think the skill set is very, very different. It takes a certain kind of person. Yeah. And particularly when you're also going through the journey from startup scrappy. Yeah. I'm just going to make it happen. And then to get to the scale you've got to, that requires.

43:27It's hard. It's weird. Quite a skill set. And I mean, I know, you know, you talk a lot about what you've learned along the journey and reacting to this going on. You have to have that pragmatism, don't you? Where like, I'm just going to, you know, we've never experienced what we're going through before. You know, you must be seeing a lot of things the first time and figuring them out as you go. Yeah, a lot. It's funny. Sometimes the team will say to me like, well, this is the way, Katie, this is the way we always do it. I'm like, what do you mean? We just started. There's no always doing something.

43:58And I appreciate, yes, of course, we need to have process and procedures and otherwise, just like we were saying, otherwise you can't be agile. But to assume something and to assume this is the way it's always done, I think that that sets potentially not to be so dramatic, but it sets you out for failure because things are changing. And also I think we have – because we had to start from scratch, we had to reimagine everything because there was nothing from which to say that's the way we always do it. But so we kind of did things our own way, a new way, the only way we could. And then other brands would start to pay attention.

44:33And then that becomes a norm of doing things. And then so if we go back and say we want to do it that same way, then we're just doing it the way everyone else does it. And then how do you break through? And ultimately, at the end of the day, that's what you're trying to do is break through the noise. There's so many things vying for your attention. How can a brand get your attention? And that's what I pay attention to attention the most. That's the most valuable asset. Isn't that what Gary Vee has a book about it? Paying attention to attention. Attention is day trading attention. That's what his book is.

45:00It's good. It's true. It's true. We pay attention to attention. That's how I figured out TikTok. I watched everyone around me, like not being able to put their phone down. So consumed by TikTok. And you've also leant into it personally, haven't you? Because you've got quite a good TikTok following yourself as well. I'm not doing dances. No. So, yeah, I'm fascinated by TikTok and by social. And I learned through Instagram, through Twitter, if you're not participating in these platforms, how are you really going to understand it? How do you really understand how content works? You can assume. You can pay attention.

45:36You can let your team know. I wanted to figure it out for myself. And we were building the team, and I was trying to hire people, and I didn't know. I had some entry-level positions to fill, and I didn't really have a pipeline of folks to tap. so I was thinking about that and it made me think a lot about actually how I got into the beauty industry and like when I was 19 20 and how I found out about some stuff and I remember I met a woman who worked at Estee Lauder when I was 19 I was like and I grew up in Missouri there was no big beauty companies there I said that's your job you do that yeah and for the rest of history like that's what I want to do.

46:18And so I thought, gosh, I wonder if I could pay it forward, be that person for someone the way I was at 19. But then also, like start to meet younger folks who could potentially work at Rare Beauty. B, understand this platform that's getting so much traction. Because I knew I knew it was going to be important for us. I didn't tell what the hell, I'll just start. And I thought, okay, I'm not obviously not going to do dances. I mean, not obviously, no shade to anyone who does them. I just do not know how. But I do know about marketing and I know about careers and the beauty industry. So I thought, okay, I'll do content around careers or joining the beauty industry.

46:55People just started following and it was sort of fun. And then I met really wonderful people and helped people find jobs. Like people would come up to me. It's just the other day when TikTok was briefly down and everyone was sort of reminiscing about, oh, back in the day. And this woman posted on Instagram about how she's like, I followed, I watched all of Katie Welch's videos around the beauty industry and I put them into practice during my interviews. And now I work at Two-Faced Cosmetics, which is a cosmetics company. That's great. Oh, my God. I was so touched. Yeah. And it's like you can share.

47:30Especially now we're all working remote or hybrid. You don't get the chance to mentor as much or to have those interactions. Sometimes it's just run-ins with people where you have learned so much in your career. And if you don't have those opportunities, you know, and if you can use platforms like TikTok or LinkedIn to share what you know, I think it's so important. And then I learned so much from them. I mean, I only know so much. But then I would hear from people one-on-one whether it was like on a TikTok Live and the types of questions that people would ask. Or I eventually ended up just doing a bunch of Zoom mentorship sessions and then like really getting to know people.

48:05And I would always ask, like, what's inspiring you right now? And at the time, and I wonder if they would answer the same way. But at the time, a lot of these individuals said TikTok. And this was 2020. And I was like, really? So again, you started to see. And they said yes. And it wasn't because they were learning the renegade dance or what have you. But it was because they were passionate about different things, be it cooking or careers. And they were able to learn more information or find people about it. And now, I mean, what we've learned is like TikTok has now replaced Google and for search.

48:34And that's where people are finding out more information. Or I guess now maybe it's even chat, GPT. Anyway, see, the world moves so fast. But it was really meaningful. And I love the community that I built on TikTok. The other thing that I've learned is how hard it is to be a creator. It takes a lot of time. So when you're a brand working with creators, when you go back to them and say, I don't really like that line. Can you redo it? That is a difficult thing to ask for. And so make sure your brief is right or just let them do it in their own voice because they understand their community and they know what's going to work.

49:11So I think I learned a lot about not only the platform, what works, what goes viral, what doesn't, but then also being a creator, the act of it and understanding how difficult it is. I have a lot of respect and admiration for creators. It's really like three or four times more work and time goes into it than people probably realize. Oh, my goodness gracious. How long do you think it takes to record a podcast and look at the prep and the travel and the setup and the set down and the editing and all that sort of thing? It's probably like three or four times more time than people imagine. Totally.

49:45I mean, the research that you went into doing this one, I was so impressed. I was like, oh, God, you read that? I hope that's okay. Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot of work. It is, isn't it? Yeah. Well, well done for building your personal brand alongside running an incredible brand as well. But it's not even about that. Like, I mean, I guess, yes, of course. But it really was. And now and now I'm super passionate about paying it forward. Yeah. And like because I think the beauty industry is a really wonderful place to work, but you don't know about all the different career paths or even how to get into them.

50:14And it's important to to pay forward, especially, in my opinion, to help people get get to the C-suite. So. And I think that's amazing thing with social is that there's so much wisdom and intel out there. You can also network with people, right? I mean, yeah, a lot of people will reply. Totally. If you want to reach out and say. I agree. The ability to get to people, learn from them, get a mentor. Sometimes I'll get TikTok resumes. So people will say like, hey, Katie, I saw that you posted a social media manager job on LinkedIn. Here's my application. And you will find them via TikTok. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

50:48If you want a job, then you know what to do. Yeah. Yeah. See you online. Oh, amazing. Katie, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I'm so flattered. Oh, no. Well, thank you because this is an amazing place. Thank you. It's quite a journey and it's been great to pick your brains about it all. Thanks. It was fun. Thank you. Thank you very much for listening or watching Uncensored CMO. I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please do hit the subscribe button wherever you get your podcasts. If you're watching, hit subscribe there as well. I'd also love to get a review. Reviews make a big difference on other people discovering the show.

51:21So please do leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to contact me, you can do. I'm over on X at Uncensored CMO or on LinkedIn where I'm under my own name, John Evans. Thanks for listening and watching. I'll see you next time.