Reference no: EM133589006

Read the passage and answer the questions

"In the factory, we make cosmetics. In the store, we sell hope." -Charles Revson, founder of Revlon

You know Robin Rihanna Fenty by her middle name, Rihanna. Since releasing her first studio album in 2005, the singer/songwriter has been one to watch. Known for her unique voice and respected for her creativity and authenticity, Rihanna currently holds six Guinness World Records and has won over three hundred awards for her work in the music industry. She is also a fashion icon, as her countless Met Gala appearances and 2014 Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) Icon Award demonstrate.

Adding to her music and fashion résumé, Rihanna has had legendary influence in the business world. For starters, Rihanna is the namesake for the critically acclaimed, eponymous cosmetics company Fenty Beauty-one of Time magazine's 25 Best Inventions of 2017. She also became the first Black woman to head a luxury brand for LVMH when she developed Fenty as a line through the fashion conglomerate's Kendo division. As if all this wasn't enough, Rihanna is also a renowned humanitarian, recognized by the Harvard Foundation for Interracial and Cultural Relations for promoting interracial and intercultural awareness and understanding.

Rihanna's impact on the cosmetics industry with Fenty Beauty is remarkable for many reasons. Fenty Beauty features a high-quality, affordable foundation that caters to oily skin, a highly underserved market in cosmetics. The brand's products are highly accessible despite being exclusively sold through its online store and Sephora retailers. And although accessibility and quality are important components of a product offering from a cosmetics brand that intentionally appeals to mainstream consumers, these are not the characteristics that most differentiate Fenty Beauty.

Rather, Fenty Beauty's biggest contribution to the cosmetics industry is a brand image rooted in inclusivity, an attribute that served as the inspiration for Rihanna's desire to start the brand in the first place. Fenty Beauty occupies a consumer-centric position in the makeup market. The brand demonstrates the idea that beauty should be available to all who want it, regardless of skin tone, making it the inclusive brand where all are likely to find products to facilitate their appearance goals. Fenty Beauty supports this positioning through an inclusive shade and undertone range boasting forty different foundations since its launch. This kind of demonstration of inclusivity-intended for everyone-is anomalous in the beauty market, and it certainly breaks with the history and tradition of marketing in cosmetics and across self-presentation categories.

Discovering and Meeting an Unmet Need

To understand the strategic importance of offering inclusivity in the cosmetics industry, one should understand the history of the industry, including identifying its prototypical consumer, describing ideals and expectations of beauty, and recognizing how the global shift toward inclusivity across a spectrum of product offerings impacts the desirability of, and demand for, self-presentation goods.

Historically, the cosmetics industry has promoted the fantasy of beauty and sold hope that consumers can get closer to the perfect look through consumption. Ever-shifting standards for what constitutes "desirable" in bodies, hair, and skin kept consumers coming back for more, sustaining growth in the $532 billion global cosmetics industry.1 Most of the people supporting this industry are the consumers for whom attaining the ideal is considered at least possible by most brands. Based on the product assortments typically provided by cosmetics companies, this is limited to people with fair to light-medium skin. This targeted marketing was considered exclusionary to many who felt product offerings did not consider their needs.

Foundation is the cornerstone of most makeup routines. Foundation typically functions by addressing the wearer's moisture needs while matching and enhancing skin tone. A well-suited foundation matches both the hue (i.e., shade or color) and undertone (i.e., coolness, neutrality, or warmth) of the skin. Consumers know they have a foundation match when the product appears to disappear or melt into their own skin tone. This match forms the base on which other cosmetics (e.g., blush and bronzer) are applied in wearers' pursuit of a desired self-presentation.

Forty foundation shades represent a wide range of offerings, which, prior to Fenty Beauty, was not available from makeup brands. Many women faced few options, making it difficult for them to achieve culturally ingrained ideals related to professional self-presentation, for example. Consider the expectation for women to wear makeup in the workplace.2 The lack of available options made it difficult for women of color to present themselves in ways that met the expectations of the professional environment. Not only could this have contributed to the wage gap among women categorized into different races, but it could also reinforce the notion that women of color do not belong in professional environments. Product assortments in retail environments reinforced the idea that beauty is not for everyone by presenting a limited selection of beauty products for different ethnicities.3

Consider the hard-working professional woman (e.g., public relations manager, marketing professor, etc.) whose skin happens to contain more melanin (i.e., described as olive, brown, deep, or dark), or whose skin tone is characterized by an absence of melanin (i.e., displaying albinism). Would you feel underserved and undermined by the cosmetics industry? If this is difficult to imagine, notable influencers such as Jackie Aina (@jackieaina), Nyma Tang (@nymatang), and Jennifer Renée Rhodes (@jreneejrenee) have been vocal about the lack of options for foundation in their skin tone and frustration with being unseen, unacknowledged, and underserved by the cosmetics industry. Their social media pages document their personal experiences trying foundation from Fenty Beauty. Each of these women underscores how pleasantly surprised they were to be recognized and to have easy access to products that allow for self-expression-something that was difficult, if not impossible, to achieve before these products were introduced.

Provoking and Leveraging Public Relations

By demonstrating how to be an inclusive cosmetics brand that provides numerous skin tones with varying undertones for each hue, Fenty Beauty enables more people to leverage foundation for its skin-tone-matching and self-presentation enhancing purposes. Underserved consumers and allies alike were drawn to the brand because Fenty Beauty underscored their beliefs in inclusivity-an emerging trend that fit perfectly with Fenty's strategy. The combination of consumers fueled sales of Fenty Beauty, leading to large volumes of earned promotions through unmatched public relations benefits. According to Google Trends, media mentions of Fenty Beauty were particularly high on social media in states with high proportions of women with darker skin, such as Maryland, Georgia, New York, and California. The brand, which launched with forty shades, was lauded as revolutionary and inclusive. The success of the brand, including the accolade of Best Invention from Time magazine, provoked a global conversation leading many cosmetics brands to reassess their own product lines and to join Fenty Beauty in challenging the status quo.

Importantly, Fenty never described itself as inclusive. Rather, this is how the press and consumers defined the brand. This "show, don't tell" tactic is valuable, as third-party perceptions of brands are deemed more credible than the brand's self-description. For its part, Fenty highlighted authentic stories of consumers' and influencers' emotional responses to the brand.4 Influencers around the world created reaction videos to the foundation, demonstrating the shade-matching capabilities and discussing the formula, often providing unscripted reactions to first-ever shade matches. "I never could have anticipated the emotional connection that women are having with the products and the brand as a whole. Some are finding their shade of foundation for the first time, getting emotional at the counter. That's something I will never get over," Rihanna told Time magazine. By letting delighted consumers speak for themselves, Fenty Beauty presented itself as genuinely and authentically invested in meaningfully and dramatically increasing representation in a previously exclusive industry. To be sure, a few brands, such as Bobbi Brown, already featured relatively inclusive foundation product lines. Yet, because that brand was well established, its historically "good behavior" was perceived as mundane when juxtaposed with Fenty Beauty, which, backed by Rihanna, was flashy and attention grabbing.

An Inclusive Future for Makeup

Thanks to Fenty Beauty, the cosmetics industry is riding the wave of inclusion. Products that cater to more marginalized members of society are expanding. Brands across the spectrum, from high-end brands such as Dior to drugstore brands such as CoverGirl, are expanding their foundation shade ranges. Meanwhile, brands catering to women of color, such as black|Up- "the first French beauty brand dedicated to women of [color]"-and Mented Cosmetics- "designed for deeper skin tones"-are expanding by offering products designed to make people of color feel more seen and respected. This shift in focus appears to be sustainable, and not simply a demonstration of inclusivity washing.

Question 1: What could be positioning statement for Fenty Beauty.

Question 2: What are the potential challenges Fenty Beauty faces in the future?

Question 3: What other industries are ripe for an inclusivity overhaul?