Building a brand... the beginning

Mirabella Beauty is 10 years old.  We have a lot of people who love our brand; hair stylists, make up artists, and consumers.  How did that happen?

First, Christy, our founder, set the foundation (no pun intended) by creating incredible formulas.  And she put it in a high end package.  She had spent years at other brands, so everything she attempted to do, including sales meetings for her small team were thought thru to the minutest detail.  Everything had to be perfect.  And she infected Amber, our Creative Director with that same intensity.

But is that it?

Well that is a great start!  But now a days, brands make impressions in so many ways.  Sure it is on shelf at a retailer still.  But the customers interact with the brand in so many other ways prior to actually making a purchase.  They call these interactions the Zero Moment of Truth.

Traditional marketing would tell you that you stimulate the consumer somehow; advertising, samples, etc.  Then the client buys the product, which marketers call the First Moment of Truth.  Then the person brings the product home and tries it, the Second Moment of Truth.

Obviously, all those are still important.  The big difference today is that we all do a lot more information gathering before we actually make that purchase.  This is crazy, but on average we use 5 sources prior to making a decision last year.  And this year, we check 10 sources! 

Sure, word of mouth is still important.  You see a sign for a new restaurant opening.  You then ask a friend if they have heard about it.  They say, "Yes, my neighbor went there and said it was great."

Now multiply that by 1,000,000!  I hear that from my neighbor, then I go on Yelp and see what others are saying.  Then I look at the restaurants website, what do they serve, what are the prices, are there any specials.  Perhaps I type in reviews after the restaurants name on google.  What do these people say?

The Zero Moment of Truth.  Building a brand today includes thinking about all of those things.

So for Mirabella, I did that.  There is a website called Total Beauty that does all the beauty reviews.  We don't have but 3 products that are even on the site?!  We have to get to work!  Those are Zero Moments of Truth I am missing.

How about Facebook?  At the beginning of the year, Mirabella had 700 fans.  I was talking to a perspective salon who commented to me, my salon have 1,100 fans.  It was obvious that because we didn't have very many fans, we were not that important in her eyes.  Today we have 16,000 fans.  Not great, but becoming legitimate for a small brand.

How about YouTube?  Same thing, if you have a channel and 10 people have watched your video, not very impressive.  We went to Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in NYC with Kandee Johnson.  We were doing the make up for Anne Bowen and Ivana Helsinki.  Kandee, a YouTube celebrity already agreed to come see what happens behind the scenes.  We put it up on YouTube and within a week 50,000 people watch our video! 

We went to NYC again to meet with all the beauty editors from the big beauty magazines like Allure, Marie Claire, Real Simple, and Lucky.  We presented Mirabella Beauty to them for the first time.  It was so exciting, they loved us!

Then that night we invited beauty bloggers to see Mirabella.  Those ladies have all blogged about us!  Even Cosmo.com had something nice to say about us! 

All of these things help!  And we keep dreaming up new and different ways of trying to get consumers excited about our brand!

If this is interesting, read the mini book about the Zero Moment of Truth, it is excellent!