Investigating Marketing Strategies

Case Study Glossier

Emily Sonya Lee Butenko

Degree Thesis
Förnamn Efternamn
International Business
2020
DEGREE THESIS
Arcada

Degree Programme: International Busness

Identification number: 7428

Author: Emily Butenko
Title: Investigating Marketing Strategies, Case Study Glossier
Supervisor (Arcada): Susanna Fabricius

Commissioned by: Tove Kietz

Abstract:
This thesis aims to explore digital marketing strategies of a beauty brand Glossier, to gain
a clear understanding of their marketing activity and connect that to gaining brand
trust. Therefore, the research question is as stated: “What digital marketing strategies can
make your customers trust your brand more?” The thesis was written in a form of a case
study, and the material for the research was collected through conducting a secondary lit-
erature review. The material of interest were online articles on Glossier marketing strate-
gies, and interviews with the founder – Emily Weiss. The case study was limited only to
Glossier and the digital marketing strategies they used to build brand trust. As a result,
having reviewed 13 articles, written within the last 5 years, (published no later than 2015)
The author was able to generate a pattern of digital marketing strategies repeatedly men-
tioned and discussed. They are: Creating a unique brand identity, Involving customers in
product creation, Social listening and customer engagement, Customer experience man-
agement for building brand loyalty and finally, Instagram marketing. It was found from
the research conducted, that Glossier is a customer-centric brand, that has a unique mar-
keting strategy, through which they engage with their customers regularly, involving
them in product creation, making them brand ambassadors, asking for their opinion and
social listening through several social media channels, mainly, but not limited to Insta-
gram. As a result, they have built strong relationships with their customers, who trust
Glossier to create quality products.
Keywords: Digital marketing, case study, beauty branding, social
media marketing.

Number of pages: 53
Language: English
Date of acceptance:

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Table of Contents
1 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 4
1.1 Brand background .................................................................................................. 5
1.2 Problem statement and research question ............................................................. 5
1.3 Aim and limitations ................................................................................................ 6
2 Theoretical Framework ........................................................................................ 6
2.1 Digital marketing .................................................................................................... 6
2.2 The beauty industry ................................................................................................ 7
2.3 Branding ................................................................................................................. 7
2.4 Customer loyalty and CEM...................................................................................... 8
2.5 Creating value beyond product..............................................................................10
2.6 Social media marketing .........................................................................................10
2.7 Brand trust.............................................................................................................11
2.8 Digital marketing strategies of beauty brands .......................................................12
2.8.1 Digitalization of the beauty industry .............................................................................. 12
2.8.2 Influencer marketing ..................................................................................................... 13
1. Benefit’s ‘Browmobile’ competition ................................................................................... 14
2. Lancôme’s ’40 shades’ ....................................................................................................... 15
3. Fenty Beauty digital launch ................................................................................................ 16
3 Methodology ...................................................................................................... 17
3.1 Research method - Case study ..............................................................................17
3.2 Data collection and analysis...................................................................................18
4 Case study .......................................................................................................... 19
4.1 Brand inroduction..................................................................................................19
4.2 Glossier brand creation..........................................................................................20
4.3 Literature review ...................................................................................................22
4.4 Glossier’s digital marketing strategies ...................................................................26
4.4.1 Creating unique brand identity ...................................................................................... 27
4.4.2 Involving customers in product creation. ....................................................................... 29
4.4.3 Social listening and customer engagement .................................................................... 30
4.4.4 Customer experience management for building brand loyalty ....................................... 31
4.4.5 Instagram marketing ..................................................................................................... 32
5 results and discussion ......................................................................................... 35
5.1 Branding ................................................................................................................35
5.2 Involving customers in product creation................................................................36
5.3 Social listening and customer engagement............................................................37
5.4 CEM for building brand loyalty ..............................................................................38
5.5 Social media marketing .........................................................................................40
5.6 Glossier’s brand trust.............................................................................................40

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 5.7 Findings .................................................................................................................42
5.8 Recommendations for further research .................................................................43
6 conclusion ........................................................................................................... 44
References:................................................................................................................. 45

1 INTRODUCTION

There is a phenomenon digital marketing being on the rise in the 21st century – the brands
that haven’t kept up with the fast pace of development in this segment of brand develop-
ment have mostly become irrelevant. In the digital age, the best way to engage with your
customer base is through digital marketing, and the beauty industry is no exception.
Recent estimations show that the beauty industry (personal care and hygiene products,
cosmetics etc.) is worth about $97.3 billion. This growth supposed to be facilitated by
the ‘selfie’ generation, since consumers are nowadays looking to visual social media plat-
forms like Instagram for inspiration. With the digital age trends, beauty brands are ab-
staining from traditional advertising and switching to digital marketing to attract the at-
tention of customers (Gilliand, 2018).

What’s exciting about digital marketing is that nowadays, brands and customers have
direct communication, which allows the brands to get feedback from the customers and
enables the customers to ask brands questions. This thesis will explore the ways in which
Glossier has used this direct access to its customer base to its advantage, in product crea-
tion and following up on the product performance, as well as creating a platform where
customers are accepted regardless of their age, skin problems and overall appearance.
Instead of creating products and then basing their marketing strategy on an aim to sell
them, Glossier interviewed thousands of women to find out what products they want and
need. This resulted in customers feeling heard and seen, they felt like they contributed to
the creation of this certain product that they bought. This made them one of the most
talked-about brands in the beauty industry, enhancing natural beauty with products that
allegedly suit everyone. Little research examines this particular brand’s approach to dig-
ital marketing and its usage of Instagram to build brand trust, as well as the involvement

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of customers into product creation. Thus, additional research, examining Glossier’s
unique digital marketing strategies is needed.

1.1 Brand background

Glossier was born out of “In the Gloss” – a blog that Emily Weiss, the founder, started
back in 2010. Glossier is described as a ‘content-first’ company, having the content man-
ifesting itself mainly on social media. Glossier’s Instagram channel, is at the heart of their
content strategy. So much, that it’s integrated on their main website. In her interview with
Financial Times, Emily stated that she came up with of the idea for the brand because of
the engagement of Into the Gloss. Glossier has a wide range of beauty products – makeup
and skincare. They are known for being simple, but effective, with good-quality formulas
that are believed to be worth their higher-end prices.

According to Gilliand (2018), Glossier is able to generate a huge amount of online en-
gagement for a brand with less than 30 products. Their posts range from sneak peeks of
new releases to influencer content, however, Glossier dedicates a big portion of its content
and activity to User Generated Content – re-posting photos and posts made by customers
and turning customer feedback into content for its social media channels.

1.2 Problem statement and research question

Glossier implements unique digital marketing strategies – they have formed a unique
relationship with their customers through social media, maintaining direct contact and
involving their customer base in the creation and marketing of their products. Therefore
it is interesting to explore their approach to digital marketing and building brand trust in
new ways.

The main research question is:

What digital marketing strategies can make customers trust your brand more?

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1.3 Aim and limitations

The aim of this thesis is to explain how the digital marketing strategies that Glossier
implemented have influenced their brand perception. This information can be found by
conducting an extensive literature review, using articles on Glossier and interviews with
Emily Weiss available online and academic literature on brand building and digital
marketing.

This research was limited only to Glossier and the digital marketing strategis they used
to build brand trust.

2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

In the theoretical framework section, the author explores aspects of digital marketing, and
social media marketing strategies as concepts, and in the beauty industry. This section
will lay the ground knowledge for the case study as a whole.

2.1 Digital marketing

As Kotler (2012) defined marketing as: “An administrative and social process through
which individuals and groups obtain what they need and desire by the generation, offering
and exchange of valuable products with their equals”. Barone (2019) states, that digital
marketing is the use of platforms like social media and search engines and other platforms
on the internet, to attract customers. Numerous marketing experts consider digital
marketing to be a completely new segment calling for to reconsidering customer
approaches and understanding how customers act on digital plaforms versus traditional
marketing.

Narayana (2019) also wrote that the internet, new communication technologies and social
media are major change catalysts in marketing. Unlike with traditional marketing the
company cannot control what is being said about its brand. It is the consumers and their
peer-to-peer communiation that is influencing brands images and perceptions. No
company is able to deceive customers anymore, since it will only result with being
exposed on the Internet. Kotler (2016, p.14) also explained that marketers need to

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embrace the shift to a more inclusive social business landscape. Social media eliminates
geographic and demographic barriers, enabling people to connect and communicate.

2.2 The beauty industry

Today, consumers around the world spend billions a year on fragrances, cosmetics, and
toiletries. The beauty industry’s shift from humble moral nuisance to a global brand-
driven powerhouse is one of the more interesting stories in modern business history. The
origins of beauty products lie primarily in local knowledge of the scents and healing
properties of plants, flowers, and herbs, uses of which were bound by ancient religious
and cultural beliefs. Yet somehow this delicate flora became the foundation of a global
industry made strong by a century of virtually uninterrupted growth that not even
economic downfalls and world wars have been able to stop. (Jones, 2010, p.1)
The beauty industry includes makeup, perfume, skin and hair care product sales.
According to Yau (2020), today’s beauty industry landscape is much different than it was
10 years ago. The growth of B2C beauty brands, enabled by social meia channels, email
marketing and shop\marketplace apps, has let those brands bypass the big beauty
corporations, that have been around for decades. Biron (2020) also wrote that the beauty
industry is now growing faster than ever before: in the last few years, many cosmetic
companies and beauty brands have started abstaining from traditional advertising
completely, in favor of digital marketing.

2.3 Branding

Thomas (2018) wrote that branding is the marketing method of a brand that consists of
developing a name, a logo design, a brand message, defining a product and a strategy of
differentiating it from other products on the market. According to Kahn (2013, p.18),
every brand, strong or weak, has a set of associations stored in a customer’s long-term
memory. Stronger brands have better-developed structures of customer knowledge than
weaker ones.
Kotler (2016, p.109) stated that marketers need to adapt to the new reality and build
brands that behave like humans. Brands that are approachable and likable, but also
vulnerable. They should become authentic and honest, admit their flaws, and stop trying

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to seem perfect. To be driven by core values, human-centric brands treat customers as
friends, becoming an integral part of their lifestyle. Human-centric marketing is the key
to building brand attraction in the digital era as brands that managed to humanize
themselves will be more differentiated. The process starts by unlocking customers’
deepest anxieties and desires. Kahn (2013, p.31) also affirmed that people often talk about
a brand as a modern patent – which suggests that there is something unique about it that
cannot be replicated. Creating a unique position is one of the most crucial tasks in building
a strong global brand. Disruptive positioning provides clear differentiation between those
brands and competition.

2.4 Customer loyalty and CEM

Srivastava and Rai (2018 p.207) referred to customer loyalty as the “holy grail” of
marketing and implying that it has long been regarded as a business question of immense
importance. The seemingly intangible, yet commercial merits of customer loyalty have
placed it at a significant strategic position in almost every organization that faces a
business environment characterized by hyper-competitive pressures due to supply
substantially surpassing demand, loosening of customer bonds and a higher probability
of corporate failures.

According to Shaw and Hamilton (2016), customer loyalty is the result of physical
attribute-based satisfaction, which includes the product or services and perceived value
of an experience, created by the brand and consistently positive, repeated emotional
experiences. Kotler (2016, p.59) affirmed that just one moment of unexpected delight
from a brand is all it takes to transform a customer into the brand’s loyal advocate. To be
able to do so, companies should map the customer part to purchase, understand customer
touchpoints across the path, and intervene in select touchpoints that matter. They should
focus their efforts – intensifying communications, strengthening channel presence, and
improving customer interface – to improve those critical touchpoints as well as to
introduce strong differentiation. Kahn (2013, p.24) wrote that customer relationship
management strategies that result in continuous, relevant, and personalized
communications between the brand and the customer improve customer retention and
profitability, build loyalty and increase the share of wallet. Shen and Bissel (2013, p. 629)

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state that the ultimate goal of creating and developing branding strategies is to enhance
customers’ brand loyalty.

Customer loyalty also leads to internal customer satisfaction and thus enables employees
to have a more reliable work environment. In this way, the motivation of employees
increases their belief in their business improves. As loyal customers often tend to share
with a business their positive and negative experiences, such a company becomes able to
position their future production processes more accurately. (Uyar, 2018, p.144–145)

Loyalty, in its most basic sense, leads to customer retention, repurchase, and a long-term
commitment. Customer loyalty is the total of a customer's satisfaction and their emotional
attachment to the company or the brand. Both of these components are largely determined
by the way a company sees its customers and the sincerity with which it serves them.
While delivering satisfactory service is vital to retain customers, creating an emotional
attachment with them is equally important to lower the risk of defection, negative word
of mouth, reducing customer stay, and lossing customer relationships. A high degree of
customer satisfaction, coupled with the customer's emotional attachment, form an
enduring association between the company and its customers, which transforms into a
loyal relationship characterised by preference, patronage and premium, as Srivastava and
Rai (2018 p.66) explained in their article on mechanics of engendering customer loyalty.

Morgan (2020) described customer experience management (CEM) as a practice of

ensuring that the voice of the customer is crucial in the company strategy, and that the
customer is considered and discussed at boardroom level, not only by the customer-facing
departments and staff; a move toward becoming customer-centric. According to
Homburg, Jozić & Kuehnl, (2017) even though research continues to debate the future of
the marketing concept, practitioners have taken the lead, calling customer experience
management (CEM) one of the most promising marketing approaches in consumer
industries. Patterson (2020) stated that consumers want customized products and being
able to contribute to the brand-related dialogues adds value to them through personally-
tailored experiences.

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2.5 Creating value beyond product
Jorgenson (2015) wrote that any business begins with value creation. It is the purpose of
the business institution: to create and value in an efficient way that will generate profit.
Spacey (2017) stated that value creation is any activity that creates outputs that are more
valuable than its inputs - this is the ground work of efficiency and productivity. Hillstrom
(2020), also wrote that value creation is the main goal of any business entity. Creating
value for a customer base helps selling products and\or services, creating value for
shareholders at the same time, in the form of increases in stock price, ensures the future
availability of investment capital to fund operations. According to Hughes (2013),
nowadays, the value of products and services is based on creativity — the innovative
ways that are possible because of new materials, technologies, and processes. Value
creation in the past was a function of economies of industrial-scale: mass production and
the high efficiency of repetitive tasks. In the future, value creation will be based on
economies of creativity. The high value of bringing a new product or service
improvement to market; mass customization; the ability to find a solution to an arisen
customer problem; or, the new and improved ways of selling and delivering of products
and services to customers.
However, Patterson (2020) explained that having the best product in your market segment
is not enough to keep a brand alive: The personalized interactions with people represent-
ing the brand is what consumers keep coming back for. A brand’s vitality can solely de-
pend on its ability to create this sense of intimacy at scale. Brands, which will facilitate
conversations with consumers, make sure that customers feel their impact on a brand’s
narrative as a whole. Those who can make shopping an experience will create profitable
friendships. She noted that one can create value beyond products using social and digital
channels to create dialogue. This will evidently uncover how to empower customers to
express themselves and feel heard by the brand community, besides better catering to
their needs by interacting with them.

2.6 Social media marketing

Kaplan (2015) defined social media as a group of applications based on the internet, that
are built on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and allow User
Generated Content to be created and exchanged.. Habibi, M. R., Laroche, M. & Richard,
M. (2014) opined that social media can offer a sufficient interaction context for a brand's

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followers. It can also enable them to build and develop relationships with the various
brand elements. Social media allows fast and easy communication with other customers
and marketers, that way they share their thoughts on a certain product and\or brand.
Therefore, these relationships will create brand trust. According to Christine (2019),
social media is more than just creating and maintaining engagement or following trends
with hashtags. It is now facilitating brand loyalty and product focus. Within their
networks, consumers have now taken over a bigger chunk of conversations about brands
online. As a resukt, they began trusting each other’s opinions and reviews more than ads.
The beauty sector has understood this new reality a long time ago. They are ahead of the
curve across different social media platforms, especially when it comes to social media
marketing implementations. Harper (2020) has made a point that as social media becomes
more and more present in daily life, it’s crucial for marketers to understand how millenial
users interact across social media platforms and to customize tailored messages that work
with the default rules of each of those platforms.

2.7 Brand trust

Kahn (2013, p.21,23) wrote that in addition to reacting emotionally to brands, consumers
typically need to trust a brand to buy one of its products. Relationships with brands go
well beyond purchase or repurchase transactions. From the customer’s point of view, the
pre-consumption, and post-consumption occasions matter as well. Relationships with
brands, just like personal relationships, are built over time through a series of positive
experiences. Here, more is not necessarily better, but what counts as meaningful
interactions. According to Crosby and Zak (2015, p.22), the important role of trust in
building strong customer relationships has been widely discussed in marketing since the
early 1990s. There are many working definitions of trust, but most revolve around the
confident expectation of honest dealings, reliability, promise-keeping, and not being
taken advantage of when vulnerable. Paper-and-pencil measures of trust indicate an
emotional connection to the other party, but trust also can have a rational component.

Kahn (2013, p.5) explained that brands need to build trust and reliability while generating
strong loyalty. In today’s connected world, customers find out about products not only
from the companies that produce them but from other customers as well. Thus, brands

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need to create strong emotional customer-focused bonds that motivate consumers to build
relationships with them and to form social communities around them. Profitability comes
from premium or value-pricing strategies, long-term relationships with the customer, and
cross-selling. Crosby and Zak (2015, p.23) also concluded that the key principle in
building brand trust for marketers is to create well-constructed, compelling narratives that
emphasize people’s struggles that the brand or company was able to help resolve.

2.8 Digital marketing strategies of beauty brands

2.8.1 Digitalization of the beauty industry

Saladich, (2019), affirmed that the beauty industry has shown to be leading retail
innovation. This innovation comes from the perspective of digital marketing, not only
from the scientific side of product creation and manufacturing. Beauty brands have
generated strategies to attract and retain customers in the fast-paced digital environment.
Belayole (2019), explained that beauty brands have also taken the lead with using
Augmented Reality (AR) for marketing purposes and with it disrupting traditional
marketing models and objectives. A growing number of brands and retailers in the beauty
sector are taking the advantage of the power of data and technology to offer consumers a
level of product personalization never seen before. They can now manufacture products
according to consumers’ skin types and individual needs. Saladich, (2019) also opined
that some brands are embracing AR with their customers, when talking about the
digitalisation of the beauty industry. The aim here is to mimic the process of trying on
makeup using technological advancements. Smashbox was the pioneer of using eye-
tracking technology. When the consumer was ‘trying on’ makeup, they were able identify
eye movement patterns that would determine whether or not the consumer was enjoying
the product. Since the implementation of the eye-tracking technology, their conversions
have increased in 27%.

According to Beauloye (2019), another thing the beauty industry is embracing is the
Internet of Things. They have definitely taken that insoiration from the digitally native
millennials. Shiseido released an IoT skincare system that tracks mood, weather,
environment, and biological changes to come up with specific serums and moisturizers
that suit the present condition of the skin. Skincare company Proven uses machine

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learning algorithms to create products that match crowdsourced learnings from its
database of AI-distilled testimonials to what an individual customer shares about their
needs. After filling out a short questionnaire on Proven’s website (questions about things
like their age, ethnicity, skin type, and their skincare priorities), customers receive custom
products they can buy.

Patterson (2020) wrote about apps like L’Oréal’s MakeupGenius App - virtual product
testing with facial and object recognition enabled. She also explained the MAC Cosmetics
The Call List campaign: MAC senior artist John Stapleton taught hundreds of MAC Pro
subscribers a masterclass on makeup artistry for aging skin on live. Participants followed
a link MAC sent them to their email, signed up for the masterclass, and when the event
started, they received a video call to join the live translation. Users could tap buttons on
the screen to virtually raise their hands if they had a question and took screenshots of the
live to share on their social media. Being able to ask questions personally from their senior
artist allowed for an illusion of being close to MAC.

2.8.2 Influencer marketing

Christine (2019) explained: the beauty industry was one of the first to see the real potential
of influencer marketing. It was noticeable how the trends shifted and how consumers
stopped shopping for beauty products the way they once did. With this, traditional
advertising techniques lost their effectiveness. Today's consumer seeks authenticity and
inclusivity. Influencers have exactly what brands need - a well-curated of follower base
trusts their opinion like that of a close friend. To generate more sales, beauty brands have
been collaborating with influencers to reach their target audience. Saladich (2019) also
affirmed that influencers are playing the key part within the beauty industry now more
than in any other segment of retail. Seeing the item they potentially wanted being
connected to ‘real people’, can lead to a decision to purchase from the customers.
Christine (2019) wrote that as an effect of the exposure to so much branded content,
consumers have grown apathetic towards ads. However, if the content is created by
another consumer, who they like as a person, and whom they have been following on
social media for a while, they are more likely to interact with it. UGC is all about
consumers exchanging their authentic opinions, views, or feelings about a specific brand
or the products that brand sells, which is so much more valuable to a potential future

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buyer. In the beauty segment of the internet, makeup reviews and tutorials are the
predominant types of UGC.

The following examples explained by Gilliland (2018) will showcase digital marketing
strategies of other widely known beauty brands:

1. Benefit’s ‘Browmobile’ competition

Even though enhancing the look of one’s eyebrows is just one step in a make-up routine
– eyebrow products take up a big part of the make up industry. According to NPD, back
in 2016, even before having released their full range of products, Benefit Cosmetics took
up a 50% share of the £20 million eyebrow product market.

The primary reason behind this domination of the brow product market shares is Benefit
Cosmetics’ marketing activity, which featured the ‘Browmobile’ campaign (2017).
Combining digital marketing with experiential elements, it consisted of an online
competition giving their customers a chance to win a service from the ”browmobile” car,
packed with Benefit’s products and a few eyebrow modelling professionals. (figure 1.)
The winners would be able to get a gift box of the brand’s products, along with a
personalized brow tutorial and treatments.

As a result of the campaign’s success, the competition page had generated roughly 61,000
unique visitors. This also ensured a lot of social media engagement.

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Figure 1. Twitter.com, @betefitcosmeticsuk mentions, 2017

2. Lancôme’s ’40 shades’

Lancôme created a series of four videos featuring 40 inspirational women including di-
rector Gurinder Chadha and Olympic cyclist Laura Kenny, as a way to celebrate the final
launch of new shades for its best-selling foundation, which now includes 40 colors. (fig-
ure 2.) The campaign was able to tap into the diversity of its target audience very cleverly
and celebrate it, which received very positive responses.
According to The Brooklyn Brothers (2017), the campaign launched across Lancôme’s
social channels, their PR list and a microsite specifically built for the campaign. Each of
the 40 women also posted the campaign bits on their personal social media profiles with
campaign hashtag; #myshademypower, to maximize engagement and start word-of-
mouth media. Additionally, in order to support the videos and further promote product
discussions by customers, Lancôme created a set of digital banners, featuring global am-
bassadors – Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o, and Victoria’s Secret model, Taylor
Hill.

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Figure 2. Lancôme 40 shades campaign page. https://www.lancome.co.uk/find-
your-shade-find-your-power/.

3. Fenty Beauty digital launch

Fenty Beauty has seriously disrupted the beauty industry, since no other brand has had a
bigger impact in the last couple of years. Rihanna’s launched her company back in 2017
with a 100% digital campaign. Fenty based their core values on the ‘beauty for all’ con-
cept, setting the tone for its inclusive, and diverse marketing by launching its foundation
in 40 different shades.
Centered around Instagram, featuring influencer content, the launch combined reviews
and opinions of beauty professionals, influencers, models, Rihanna’s fans – Fenty’s
unique Instagram strategy attracted 1.4m followers within only four days. (figure 3.)

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Figure 3. Instagram @fentybeauty profile

3 METHODOLOGY

The aim of this section is to set out the methodological approach, undertaken to tell the
story of Glossier and discover the digital marketing strategies implemented by the brand.
This section will be guided by the research aim and the chosen methodological approach.
This section will also explain how the data for the research method indicated below was
collected in order to conduct the said study.

3.1 Research method - Case study

According to Heale, Twycross, (2018), a case study is a research methodology, usually

used in social and life sciences. There is no single concrete definition of case study

17
research. Although, simply put: “A case study can be defined as an intensive study about
a person, a group of people or a unit, which is aimed to generalize over several units”.

Conducting an explanatory case study seemed like the most suitable approach to con-
ducting this research, since there was a specific brand in question, and the phenomenon
of its success, achieved by using specific digital marketing techniques, that the author
wanted to explore. An explanatory approach was taken due to the author having no con-
trol over the occurrence of the events in research, but rather striving to explain the “why”
and the “how” regarding the case brand. This case study was conducted after a careful
review of literature on qualitative research and case studies, to help with the structure and
guide the author in the right direction. Articles written by journalists and authors knowl-
edgeable about the beauty industry were collected to gain insight into digital marketing
strategies implemented by several well-known beauty brands. The author then reviewed
the articles about Glossier, transcribed interviews with Emily Weiss, published by re-
spected big magazines, and drew conclusions from the literature review as a whole. This
allowed to see how what the case brand has done is unique in terms of marketing and
building brand trust.
In this case study, the limitations were an excessive amount of data, even though most of
it was peer-reviewed articles. Organizing this data and thinking through the integration
strategies, not steering away from the aim of the research has been an undeniable chal-
lenge.

3.2 Data collection and analysis

The chosen data collection qualitative methodology is a case study, including a literature
review. According to Onwuegbuzie and Frels (2016), as a data collection tool, the litera-
ture review involves activities such as identifying, recording, understanding, meaning-
making and transmitting the information. The literature review process is actualized
through data collection.

The main methods for collecting data that the author has used were keywords, to optimize
database search in Arcada Finna, Google Scholar, and Google search. The main criteria
for data source choice were academic credibility, relevance, magazine reputation, and
how old the data was (only sources no older than 10 years were used). The author has

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also picked out data from transcribed interviews with the founder of Glossier, Emily
Weiss, for the sake of keeping the accuracy of the information.

4 CASE STUDY

This explanatory case study studied digital marketing strategies that the case brand Gloss-
ier has implemented to build brand trust and strong customer relationships. Additionally,
the author has conducted a literature review to gain insight into the phenomenon of the
said brands unique social media presence. Case brand’s usage of digital marketing, as a
form of creation of a unique brand identity, their usage of social media channels to con-
nect with their customers and involve them into product creation was examined described
with the results of secondary research findings.

4.1 Brand inroduction

Glossier is a beauty brand founded in 2010 by Emily Weiss, which started as a beauty
blog. In her interview with Financial Times, Emily stated that she thought of the idea for
the brand because of the engagement her blog had. Glossier has a wide range of beauty
products – makeup and skincare. They are known for being simple, but effective, with
good-quality formulas that are believed to be worth their higher-end prices. This paper
will investigate the unique digital marketing strategies that the brand in question has im-
plemented via literature review, having compared numerous resources of information.

Over the years, Glossier became known for an unusual approach to product innovation –
they would interview women asking for what they are looking for in certain beauty prod-
ucts. Scent or no scent? Is it tacky? Is it smooth? Sticky? Long-lasting or moisturizing,
does it make your skin glow or is it matte? Based on these answers, Glossier was able to
create products that women wanted and made them feel heard and engaged in the process.
A lot of the orders that Glossier is getting are from women who feel like they’ve contrib-
uted to the making of the products they’re buying and will be using. Glossier has made it
their mission to make people feel good and excited about the purchasing experience, to
be a part of something.

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According to Danzinger (2018) with close to three million followers, Glossier has been
named a top beauty brand by Allure, Teen Vogue, Glamour, Nylon, Women’s Wear Dai-
lyand Cosmopolitan. Glossier has also received a WWD Beauty Inc. Digital Innovator of
the Year award in 2015, was named to LinkedIn Top Startups of 2018 list, recognized
by Fast Company as one of its Most Innovative Companies of 2017 and called out as one
of Inc.’s Company of the Year 2017.

According to Nicholson (2019), Glosier’s aesthetic is soft and radiant, they aim for their
products to make the customers’s skin look dewy and healthy, all the products that impose
color like tints, blush, lip products etc. are light and sheer, which makes the makeup look
seamless and natural. This corelates with the brand message of embracing natural beauty
with little intervention.

“How beauty can start conversations, how beauty can break down walls, and how beauty
is something that every single person everywhere in the world deals with. It’s really foun-
dational to who you are and how you relate.” – Emily Weiss, 2019

4.2 Glossier brand creation

Elisson (2019) called the story of Glossier’s creation one of the most compelling business
stories in recent years. The 34-year-old entrepreneur Emily Weiss started a beauty blog,
Into the Gloss, simultaneously working as a fashion assistant at US Vogue in 2010. Four
years later, she launched Glossier, a beauty company focusing on millennial-friendly
products that showcased natural, healthy skin on a diverse range of faces. One of its best-
selling Boy Brow sticks (£14) sold every 32 seconds worldwide last year. In 2018, the
company surpassed $100m in annual revenues, acquired a million new customers, and
now employs more than 200 people across three offices. This year Glossier raised $100m
in Series D funding led by Sequoia Capital, taking the company’s total funding to $186m
and giving it a $1.2bn valuation. About 50,000 visitors pass through its New York store
each month, and the brand has 2.8 m Instagram followers. Before founding Glossier,
Weiss had zero business training.

20
Nicholson (2019) wrote that Weiss started “Into the Gloss”, the blog that served as an
inspiration for Glossier, when she was working as an assistant to Elissa Santisi, the then
style director at US Vogue. On Into the Gloss, Weiss had a column in the blog, where
asked women about their beauty routines. She used the insights from hundreds of inter-
views to build up an idea of what women might want from a brand that sells beauty prod-
ucts. Makeup sales have then flatlined in the US, while skincare sales have risen. Glossier,
took the right place at the right time, with its early and pioneering focus on skincare and
its positive affirmations, embracing natural beauty; there is a school of thought, that, in-
stead of investing in makeup to cover up skin imperfections, one should invest in skincare,
so that by having good skin and a healthy appetence naturally, the makeup use would be
brought down to a minimum.

Emily Weiss was named “one of her generation’s great disruptors” by Times Magazine.
When she gave a speech, she spoke on how the beauty industry had “historically made
people, mostly women, feel they aren’t enough”, and spoke brightly of today’s “coura-
geous, resilient, unflappable” teenage girls. “To girls everywhere, may you know how
much power you have to change the world,” she said, finishing her speech to great ap-
plause. (Elisson, 2019)

Emily Weiss gave an interview to Financial Times in 2019, where she explained the
though behind Glossier :

“One of the insights that led to the creation of Glossier was actually my experience lis-
tening to women as I was interviewing them for the blog years ago telling me how much
they loved their Lancôme mascara or how much they really loved their XYZ moisturizer.
But reading between the lines, I didn’t hear them saying that they loved these brands. I
heard them say that they loved the products. Back in 2013, when I was first thinking about
Glossier, I thought: “Man, I wish there was a beauty brand whose sweatshirt you wanted
to wear.” It really speaks to this notion of winning hearts. A company like Glossier creates
this, “I want to wear this brand’s sweatshirt”, kind of mindset. So — to your point — how
many brands’ sweatshirts are you going to wear? How many brands are actually repre-
senting the values that you align with? And I do think that our success to date has been
about that value alignment.

21
I think in 2019 brands are increasingly like people. What are your values? What do you
stand for? What are you speaking up on? What are you staying quiet about?
Glossier came out with a very simple proposition and very direct and utilitarian products.
It said, “hey, everybody, we’re interested in you and your story and your opinions and
your routines, and these are just tools in your toolbox to activate a quite passive beauty
community.” The fact that there are now millions of people, both in the US and around
the world, beating to this drum says something about the shift in the democratization of
beauty.”

Lammertink (2019) noted that from the very beginning Glossier has positioned itself as a
customer-centric brand, as well as direct-to-customer, seeing as they own their entire sales
funnel. Glossier continues to have incredible power because of this. They abstained from
channel partners, resellers, and selling through department stores altogether. Unlike the
bigger and older beauty brands, who have been relying on their partnerships with big
retailers, Glossier only sells their products through channels that they own and have full
control over.

4.3 Literature review

Since Glossier is a relatively young beauty brand, and the case study focused on digital
marketing, most of the material for the literature review are web articles. These particular
articles were chosen because of their relevancy to the research, as they talk about the
marketing of the brand in question, explore their digital marketing strategies, explain the
motivation behind them and give a great understanding of the “why” and the “how” of
Glossier’s strategies. They have also been picked out because of their relevancy, based
on the year they were written (no older than 5 years).

Name Source Author Year Relevant findings

“Inside Glossier, Buzzfeed Tiku, N. 2016 - Glossier’s innovation
The Beauty News was using the inter-
Startup That net’s full capacity at
Reached Cult every step: using the
Status By Sell- social media tools to
ing Less.” turn blog readers into
followers and follow-
ers into brand ambas-
sadors, unpaid product
promoters, something

22
 like a loyal commu-
nity, that buys their
products at the same
time.
“Glossier The Guard- Nicholson, R. 2019 - Understanding people
Founder Emily ian and especially women
Weiss: ‘Beauty is the key to Emily
Has Very Little Weiss’s vision.
To Do With - “Glossier came up
Looks’.” with its products by
asking women what
they wanted, rather
than telling women
what they needed.”

“The Glossier Jumper Hart, K. 2019 - Glossier got custom-

Marketing Ma- Media ers to connect with the
chine: How brand by association
Emily Weiss with other everyday
Built A $100 objects.
Million Busi- - They used slack to lis-
ness.” ten to their top cus-
tomers.
- Glossier is authentic
in all aspects of the
brand

Instagram insights:
- They used their prod-
ucts as their content.
- Encouraged customers
to use branded
hashtags for a chance
at getting featured on
their Instagram profile
- Leveraged UGC of
celebrities as well as
regular people.

“Glossier’s Financial Ellison, J. 2019 - Full transcribed inter-

Emily Weiss: Times view with Emily
‘We’re Creating Weiss on Glossier’s
The Estée strategies for growth.
Lauder Of The
Future’.”
“Top 5 Digital Verb Saladich, C. 2019 - Glossier’s product
marketing trends Brands management strategy
in the beauty in- involves tracking
dustry.” customer data across
several social media

23
 platforms in order to
turn its readers into
followers and then
customers.
- Building a sense
of community with
their target audience
helped achieve higher
levels of loyalty, and
therefore improved
conversion rates.

“This Beauty Business In- Bruner, R. 2016 - Glossier was de-

Startup Has Be- sider scribed as "two-way
come So Popu- conversation,".
lar That It Has - the Glossier product
10,000 People team depends on the
On A Waitlist user community,
For Lipstick.” which guides them in
the product creation
process.
- Glossier's marketing
has been motivated by
UGC.

“5 Reasons That Forbes Danziger, P. 2018 - Glossier’s strategy is

Glossier Is So customer-centric.
Successful.” - Their main driver of
growth is their engag-
ing content.
- A huge asset is their
close relationship with
their customers, e.g.
direct customer con-
versations.
- Glossier puts the spe-
cific consumer prob-
lem first, thus simpli-
fying the sales and
marketing process by
satisfying those cur-
rent needs one by one.
That is how they co-
create their products
with customers.

“Glossier Mar- Skedsocial Boogaard, K. 2018 - Glossier marketing is

keting Decoded: all about authenticity.
How To Insta- - They take engagement
gram Like to a new level

24
Glossier, Social - They make the most
Media Strat- out of hashtags
egy.” - A value they’ve car-
ried over into their so-
cial media strategy is
being highly personal

“Glossier’s Dig- Cercone Brown, C. 2020 - An active digital strat-

ital Marketing Brown egy and presence are
Strategies Are Company crucial for beauty
Disrupting The brands, especially for
Beauty Indus- connecting with mil-
try.” lennial target audi-
ence. Glossier has
found the perfect for-
mula for creating
brand trust with their
customers.

“Treating Regu- Vox Del Valle, G. 2019 - Everything about

lar People Like Glossier is specifi-
Influencers Is cally made to be pho-
The Key To tographed and posted
Glossier’s Suc- on social media.
cess.” - Many Glossier cus-
tomers play a role in
marketing the brand.

“Glossier - How Octoly Anonymous 2020 - Glossier’s marketing

To Build A strategy is based on
Makeup Em- social networks, influ-
pire.” encer marketing and
customer data, which
all result in a unique
experience for its cli-
ents.

“Why Glossier Medium Lammertink, 2019 - 1\3 of the company is

Embodies The I. tech. Glossier has
Future Of Shop- mastered social listen-
ping And B2C ing at scale, engage-
Marketing.” ment at scale, and
they build smart me-
dia algorithms.
- They understand that
today’s generation
wants their opinion to
be considered, seen

25
 and involved in the
products they buy.

“Owning Cus- Transparen- Anonymous - Glossier is disrupting

tomer Relation- cyDigital the beauty industry by
ships: Glossier basing its entire mar-
Case Study.” keting strategy around
customer relationship
management and
brand trust.

- Glossier’s customers
have been made to
feel like they are co-
creators of the brand.

- Glossier’s slack chan-

nel allows them to use
their customer feed-
back for research and
product development
purposes.

4.4 Glossier’s digital marketing strategies

“While we now consider Into The Gloss as our biggest social platform and part of our
core community, we treat our readers and our Glossier customers as two very different
entities. However, we know there’s an opportunity to use data to better understand how
we can create an optimized reader and customer experience across platforms.”

- Bryan Mahoney, Glossier’s Chief Technology Officer.

Glossier is a great example of a digital beauty brand that disconnected itself from tradi-
tional big beauty retailers by embracing unique digital marketing strategies for millennial-
aged consumers. (Brown, 2020) Glossier’s successful innovation was utilizing the inter-
net at every step: using the social media management to turn Into the Gloss blog readers
into followers and then into brand ambassadors, unpaid product marketers, something
like a loyal community, that buys your products at the same time, wrote Tiku (2016).
70% of Glossier’s growth has been facilitated by owned, earned, or organic media

26
(Lammertink 2019). According to Nicholson (2019), the key to Emily Weiss’s vision is
the customers and really understanding them on a personal level, which has disrupted the
traditional industry sales model and has set a new standard for value creation beyond
products. She often talks about the “democratization” of beauty, about how Glossier came
up with its products by asking women what they wanted, rather than telling them what
they needed. She built brand awareness using word-of-mouth on social media, having
people genuinely like what Glossier is about, resulting in sharing that excitement. It gave
her supportive, organic following, and a huge community that is loyal to the brand. Gloss-
ier focus a lot of resources on understating their customers, their desires, fears, insecuri-
ties, and aspirations. Del Valle (2019) stated that Glossier treats customers as both a cus-
tomer base to be marketed to and the people who do the marketing. And Lammertink
(2019) wrote that one of the reasons for Glossier’s success is that they understand their
target audience, who are millennials. They understand that today’s generation wants their
opinion to be considered, seen, and involved in the products they buy.

Hart (2019) explained that Glossier’s branding also touches on the look of the women
who buy their products achieve with them. While diverse in ages (they target millennials,
but feature women of all ages), race, and body types, the look is centered around glowing
skin and sheer pastel tones—captured and represented on Instagram in the down-to-earth
tone they’ve mastered. Moreover, Glossier’s brand message is utterly positive—it cele-
brates uniqueness, diversity, and being your authentic self.
Brown (2020) An active digital strategy and presence are crucial for beauty brands, espe-
cially for connecting with the millennial target audience. Glossier has found the perfect
formula for creating brand trust with their customers. These aspects all put together with
a strong social media presence and CEM can make an unstoppable brand.

4.4.1 Creating unique brand identity

According to Del Valle (2019), anything Glossier puts out is designed to be photographed
and posted online, for example the pink bubble-wrap pouches or the New York and Los
Angeles showrooms. The LA showroom has a “canyon” section that is designed to be
photographed; and both locations feature mirrors with stickers with positive affirmations,
that are perfect for pictures. It’s making everything associated with the brand cohesive,
and pleasant to create digital content with.

27
Hart (2019) opined that Glossier is successful primarily because of two things: their
branding strategy and social media presence. “Brand is really, really important. It’s kind
of everything,” Weiss says. This reflected in the Glossier’s use of its claimed signature
washed-out pink. (figure 4.) The color has become directly associated with Glossier and
their followers\customers use the hashtag #glossierpink when they see that color any-
where else. Many people like featuring and tagging Glossier because the products look
very aesthetically pleasing. Lammertink (2019) wrote that when one buys products in
their store, it comes wrapped in a pink bubble-wrap pouch, mentioned above. No logo
even needed, the signature Glossier packaging can be identified by anyone who knows
the brand. Like a secret they are let in on, also a part of customer experience. Hart (2019)
also noted that the pink bubble-wrap bag became so popular that at some point that Gloss-
ier offered them as a separate product. (figure 5.)
Glossier has also released a small limited edition clothing merchandise, called Glossi-
Wear (figure 6.), including several clothing pieces with the brand logo. Encouraging cus-
tomers to not only purchase the product but wear the clothing, promoting the brand fur-
ther.

Figure 4. #glossierpink Instagram search results

28
Figure 5. @glossier Instagram account Figure 6. www. glossier.com

4.4.2 Involving customers in product creation.

Danzinger (2018) wrote that unlike beauty brands that develop products first, and then
figure out the selling process, Glossier identifies the customer need first, after which they
manufacture a specific product, which makes the sales and marketing process much more
simple. In this way, Glossier co-creates its products with customers. Collecting customer
data and feedback is one thing, innovating products based on that feedback is something
entirely different(Anonymous, 2020). President and CFO of Glossier, Henry Davis, ex-
plained that Glossier involves customers in product creation by asking them what they
want in certain beauty products. According to Danzinger (2018) that is how they came
out with the Glossier Milky Jelly cleanser: they put out a question asking how their cus-
tomers washed their face, and the people shared that the routine involved two steps and
two different products: makeup remover and face wash. Glossier went ahead and simpli-
fied the cleansing by combining both steps, giving one product two functions, something

29
that a traditional beauty brand would avoid doing, as it would take away the potential
sales of two separate products.

Hart (2019) noted that Glossier was launched at the peak of the social media usage around
the world and used its social media accounts to listen to what its customers wanted, which
gave them an advantage over larger beauty brands, who relied on old traditional advertis-
ing methods. Bruner (2016) described Glossier as a "two-way conversation," because the
Glossier product team depends on the user community for insight into their needs, which
guides them in the product creation process. Glossier even invited about 100 of its top
customers to be part of a group Slack channel, where they exchange over 1,100 messages
every week, Weiss shared back in 2019.

4.4.3 Social listening and customer engagement

“We don’t build the hype, we build the product, we built the product based on listening.”
– Emily Weiss 2019 for The Guardian

In the same interview for The Guardian, Weiss told Jo Ellisson that Glossier takes an
Apple-like approach to their product creation. They are not interested in the “fast fashion”
beauty product strategy, but instead, they focus on creating high-quality products that are
going to live with the customer. She also explained that she doesn’t like to use the word
“crowdsourcing”, but that listening and continuing to listen at scale is something Glossier
is laser-focused on. Weiss also implied that it is something that any smart brand\company
is going to have to do increasingly.

Saladich (2019) noted that Glossier’s product management strategy involves tracking
behavioral customer and audience data across several platforms in order to better position
its readers to become customers, and vice-versa. Their blog and commenters have also
become a vital source of information for product creation. They compiled comments and
queries to make sure any new products were developed with this feedback in mind. Lam-
mertink (2019) also noted that ⅓ of Glossier is tech. They’re leverage technology tools
to practice social listening at scale, engage at scale, and build smart data discovery algo-
rithms.

30
Figure 7. @glossier Twitter Account

4.4.4 Customer experience management for building brand loyalty

Danzinger (2018) wrote that Glossier is driven by a fierce and loyal dedication to serving
its customers’, tailoring the products and the approach to their wants and needs. It all
comes from its close and intimate customer relationships.

“What does it take to be the future beauty company? I say it’s putting the customer expe-
rience front and center. People often ask me, are you a beauty company? Are you a tech
company? Are you a start-up? The answer is yes, yes and yes. But, most importantly, we
are an experience company. We create digital experiences, we create physical product
experiences, and we create offline experiences.”
– Emily Weiss 2019 for The Guardian

When it comes to the actual buying experience, according to Brown (2020) once a cus-
tomer has figured out what product they want to buy and have it in their cart, the online
check-out experience is fast and easy, almost seamless. People have gotten used to doing
everything online, and Glossier, as a digitally native brand, is able to provide the experi-
ence that suits its customers.

31
Apart from product development and quality control teams, Glossier has what they call
their Customer Experience Team (gTeam). The gTeam is collecting feedback from their
from the customer community around-the-clock, using their social media following and
taking responsibility for creating the best, close and honest customer experience. Glossier
has made making sure their customers’ voices are heard their top priority - this laid the
ground for a structure that keeps the customer front and center at all times. (Anonymous,
2020)

4.4.5 Instagram marketing

“We’re using the channel (Instagram) to actually involve the customer in ways she’s
never been allowed or invited to become involved [in order] to build an incredibly inclu-
sive movement like a better, more modern brand, which is going to become default.”
- Emily Weiss for BuzzFeedNews, 2016

“Instagram, for us, has been an incredible tool to show a lot of user-generated content,”
Weiss told Swisher. “What we’re interested most in is creating this really democratized
conversation. What we do a lot of on our channel on Instagram is really celebrate peo-
ple’s stories. We try to find people who use Boy Brow or [another] Glossier product, but
what we really want to do is evangelize that person’s whole routine and all of her discov-
eries, whether that’s a L’Oréal product or a MAC product.”

Hart (2019) stated that anyone involving Instagram in their marketing strategy knows that
if you want your account to gain an organic following, branding is essential. Glossier may
not have a correlating, cohesive Instagram feed, but their posts show they’ve got a perfect
understanding of what branding is. Glossier has applied some specific strategies to make
their profile of the best on Instagram. Boogaard (2018) also noted that the brand some-
times overflows into two other related Instagram accounts: the account for Weiss’ still-
popular lifestyle blog, Into the Gloss, and her own personal Instagram account. Hart
(2019) explained that Glossier uses their products as their content: In an interview with
Eric Liaw at the StrictlyVC event, Weiss said that she sees Glossier as a content company:
she thinks of her products as content. The reason for this is that many customers who buy
the products, end up photographing them or themselves using them and the result of using

32
them, then share them on social media. Boogaard (2018) wrote that before any products
were even launched on the brand’s website, Glossier’s Instagram account had gained
13,000 Instagram followers. The brand also posted over 125 Instagram photos prior to
the product launch to lay the groundwork for its unique brand identity and aesthetic, as
well as create some excitement about the upcoming product launches.

Additionally, Glossier has their own hashtag strategy. Hashtags make it easy for fans to
share and find content and also help people differentiate it. According to Hart (2019)
Glossier encourages customers to use branded hashtags for a chance at getting featured.
The fans realised the Glossier team looks through the posts they tag them in, because they
comment and even choose models for the product shoots from the tagged photos. Many
users tag #glossier because the products look very aesthetically pleasing, which goes back
to a unique brand identity. Boogaard (2018) also wrote that over the years, Glossier has
had numerous different hashtags associated with their brand (i.e. #glossier, #itgtopshelfie,
#nofilterjustglossier, #boybrow, #cloudpaint, and more). Hashtags enable the brand to use
user-generated content on their own Instagram account —that way they always have new
posts, while also remaining authentic and further engaging their audience.

Glossier's marketing has been motivated by User Generated Content, which Weiss said
does "more than we ever could," as users post on Instagram and hashtag their beauty
habits (Bruner, 2016). Glossier leverages UGC of celebrities as well as regular people in
the coveted 18-to-35 age bracket. Unofficial brand ambassadors include model Karlie
Kloss, who posted a photo wearing Glossier merchandise that gained 27,000 likes, and
actress Sofia Coppola who is referred to be an inspiration to the brand. Glossier gets thou-
sands of tagged photos a day, which the team then reviews and looks for “real girl”
models (Hart, 2019).

Boogaard (2018) noted that Glossier’s social media presence never seems elite or un-
touchable—it’s raw, real, and down-to-earth. There are shots of bathrooms and showers,
natural-looking selfies of diverse subjects, even dog photos. They use a friendly tone of
voice in all of their captions and are careful not to become overly-promotional. Their grid
seems approachable and relatable—as if you’re looking at an Instagram account of a
friend, rather than a brand. Hart (2019) wrote that Glossier Instagram page gives follow-
ers a sense of community, without it being too official or exclusive, which is pleasant to
scroll through, a sort of another customer experience.

33
“The beauty of Glossier lies in the fact that it’s for everyone.” – Hart, 2019.

Lammertink (2019) explained that Glossier understands that customer engagement is cru-
cial – they have been nurturing this direct connection they have with their customers from
the beginning. They are directly reachable through social media platforms, answering to
comments and sharing UGC (Figure 8.). Hart (2019) also wrote transparency is also a
part of an authentic customer experience in the digital world, and if users post their honest
feedback freely, future customers are more likely to trust the brand. UGC ensures that
transparency for Glossier.
Hart (2019) noted that Glossier shoots photos on an iPhone rather than a DSLR camera,
unlike most major beauty brands. The casual phone camera approach to content creation
makes it feel more natural, and relatable, according to Annie Kreighbaum, executive ed-
itor of Into the Gloss. Glossier’s photos, look real and raw, in comparison with the pho-
toshopped images are standard in the beauty community. They also sometimes present
new products using Boomerang and video, instead of using traditional product shots, so
all content has a down-to-earth and approachable feel.

Figure 8. @glossier Instagram account

34
5 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The author has decided to stop after reviewing 13 articles when the content of the said
articles began repeating, therefore she concluded that she was able to find most of the
available unique information at that point in time. As a result of the conducted literature
review, the author was able to generate a pattern of digital marketing strategies repeatedly
mentioned and discussed. They are: Creating unique brand identity, Involving customers
in product creation, Social listening and customer engagement, Customer experience
management for building brand loyalty, and Instagram marketing.

The main limitation of this research is having a large number of literature resources
available on the internet, both search engines and the Arcada library. Having that much
information can make it difficult to find the right books or articles, having to question
their reliability. The author had to rely on her own judgment, to distinguish the valid
sources and their contents from invalid ones. The issue with that is the possibility of losing
some important insight into the topics in the numerous articles or not having access to the
most recent trends in the digital marketing because they haven’t been written about or
evaluated because in the digital age no area of business is ever stagnant, new tendencies
and trends arise every day, it can be challenging to keep track of them.

5.1 Branding
Kahn 2013 (p 18.) made a statement that strong brands have better-developed customer
knowledge structures than weak ones. When a person familiar with Glossier thinks of the
brand, they get very clear imagery in their mind. Glossier has managed to make their
branding strategy invisible, yet extremely powerful. They have created a truly unique
brand identity – they have claimed the washed-out pink color as part their own branded
image, and research shows that whenever their customers see the color elsewhere, they
associate it directly with Glossier, take a picture and create more digital content, further
promoting the brand. The existing hashtag #glossierpink serves as evidence for that.
Glossier logo font is also very distinctive and clear, added they have simplified it by using
just the capital ”G” on products. The letter looks suggestive and appealing, and again,

35
creates a direct connection with the brand image. This clarity extends to everything Gloss-
ier puts their name onto, it runs through their social media channels, as well as their web-
site. It’s cohesive and clean, there is no conflict or inconsistency. The image that they
have sustained for themselves correlates with the soft-pink color coordination. As Kahn
(2013 p.18) wrote, creating a unique position is one of the most crucial tasks in building
a strong global brand.

They make sure the brand message comes across loud and clear – they are for diversity,
supporting all people of all races and genders, encouraging them to embrace their natural
beauty and come as they are.

5.2 Involving customers in product creation

Because Glossier was created as a result of the engagement of Into The Gloss (Emily
Weiss’s blog). Therefore, before the brand even launched, it already had an audience.
Prior to making any products, Glossier quite literally asked women what products they
wanted and what qualities should those products possess. This took the struggle of creat-
ing demand and selling strategy out of the equation. Moreover, it laid down the ground-
work for building strong customer relationships, because what better way to go about
customer engagement, than letting them know that their opinion matters. One more out-
come, that plummeted the sales numbers, was the fact that women felt like they contrib-
uted to the creation of the products they were buying, tailor-made for them. This mental
connection to the product created a strong bond between the Glossier and the customer.
They feel like they are co-creators of the brand. Involving customers into product creation
makes customers feel like their opinions matter and are valued by the brand. It makes
them feel heard. It also creates a feeling of having contributed to something as exciting
as the creation of a beauty product, therefore buying it gives satisfaction and a sense of
pride for adding something from yourself to that product. It also gives the customers ex-
actly what they have asked for, which, surprisingly, not a lot of brands do. As Patterson
(2020) wrote, empower them to express themselves and feel heard by the brand commu-
nity. How easy is it to sell to customers who are telling you how to improve the products
themselves?

36
5.3 Social listening and customer engagement
Kotler (2016 p.111) defined social listening as the proactive process of monitoring what
is being said about a brand on the internet, particularly on social media and online com-
munities. It often involves social media monitoring software to filter massive amounts of
unstructured data from social conversations into usable customer intelligence infor-
mation. And as Patterson (2020) noted one can create value beyond products using social
and digital channels to create dialogue. This will in return show how to better satisfy the
needs of your customers via simple interaction.

The research confirmed that Glossier takes social listening seriously and considers it to
be one of their greatest assets in their marketing strategy. Their team constantly monitors
several social media channels, including but not limited to: Instagram, Twitter, Slack;
That way they track the behavioral customer and audience data for further improving the
products, the content, and the brand image as a whole.

Mahoney (Glossier’s CTO) also realized that the Into the Gloss readers are 40% more
likely to buy Glossier’s products than people who just visit their website, which helped
him work out a strategy of turning the blog readers into customers, by better connecting
with them. Customer loyalty and engagement directly depends on how personalized and
customized the marketing message is. Evidently, what helped achieve higher levels of
loyalty was building a sense of community with Glossier’s target audience. Which in the
end resulted in improved conversion rates, stated Saladich (2019).

One must understand the importance of personalized interactions of customers with peo-
ple representing the brand, this is the factor that they keep coming back for; having the
best product in a certain segment of the market on its own will not keep a brand alive.
Creating a sense of intimacy at scale will ensure the vitality of the brand. A way that
brands can ensure customers feel their impact on a brand’s narrative is to facilitate con-
versations with them (Patterrson, 2020). Loyal customers often tend to share with a busi-
ness their positive and negative experiences, such a company becomes able to position
their future production processes more accurately, according to Uyar, (2018, p. 144 –
145). Glossier listens to this and engages in these conversations, facilitating brand trust.

37
5.4 CEM for building brand loyalty
Kahn (2013, p.24) wrote that customer relationship management strategies that result in
continuous, relevant, and personalized communications between the brand and the cus-
tomer. Relationships with brands go well beyond purchase or repurchase transactions.
Schwabel (2015), referenced the Forbes statistics which show that up to 62% of millen-
nial respondents admitted that they are loyal to brands that engage with them on a personal
level through, for example, social media.

Emily Weiss has mentioned customer experience management several times in the inter-
views (mention which ones) reviewed by the author. She describes her strategy as cus-
tomer-centric and says: “Most importantly, we are an experience company. We create
digital experiences, we create physical product experiences, and we create offline expe-
riences.” That being said, Glossier strives to create experiences that stay with customers
– their core values are staying inclusive, welcoming diverse customers, embracing
women of all ages, with all skin types, making women feel beautiful naturally, etc.

Kahn (2013, p.23) wrote that relationships with brands, just like personal relationships,
are built over time through a series of positive experiences.
When it comes to digital experiences Glossier is famous for having strong digital, and
especially, social media presence. The digital experiences that a customer can have with
glossier are being featured on their social media with a content repost, being asked for
their opinion on the performance of their products, their beauty routine, favorite Glossier
products, and so on. Shaw and Hamilton (2016) stated that a series of positive emotional
experiences result in successful customer loyalty building. Kotler (2016, p.59) made a
point that just one moment of unexpected delight from a brand is all it takes to transform
a customer into the brand’s loyal advocate (getting featured, reposted, answered
to.) intensifying communications, strengthening channel presence, and improving
customer interface.
These experiences can also be something like being exposed to positive content showcas-
ing women of all age groups, ethnicity, skin types (Glossier even posts people with im-
perfect skin, making everyone feel accepted as they are), featuring customers regardless
of them having a large following or being a model or social influencer. Additionally,
Glossier’s website is very minimalistic, aesthetically pleasing, and easy to navigate. The

38
purchasing of the products online can be completed in a few short steps, the payments are
guaranteed to be safe and the shipping times are calculated at checkout but can be found
for each country.
The physical product and offline experiences that a glossier customer can have are the
purchasing in-stores, which have been reported to be pleasant as well, having the famous
soft-pink Glossier color scheme, that looks right in pictures, minimalistic interior and
helpful staff. The products are physically pleasant, the attention to detail can be noted,
since the design looks cohesive, including all packaging. It can be conducted that Gloss-
ier’s team has put a lot of thought into making the physical product experiences pleasant
for their customers. Brown (2020) explained that Glossier’s digital community’s engage-
ment is facilitated by these offline and in-store experiences, that’s how they retain cus-
tomers. The stores can be about more than selling products, because customers who come
to Glossier’s stores and pop-ups tend to have had an interaction with the brand’s content
and are familiar with Glossier. Instead, they design their spaces to improve the buying
experience. This, in return, encourages customers to create content for social media –
UGC. Glossier is good at “making shopping experiential”. (Patterson 2020). Brands need
to create strong emotional customer-focused bonds that motivate consumers to build re-
lationships with them and to form social communities around them, according to Kahn
(2013, p.21).

Weiss told Tiku (2016) that Glossier’s goal is “to make women proud of where they’re at
every day.” Having collected insight from so many information sources like comments
and Slack groups, Glossier has been able to create a new niche of semi-affordable con-
sumer goods in the beauty segment of the market, because they feel luxurious and per-
sonalized as they are customized to buyers’ individual needs. Weiss refers to an experi-
ence that caters to the beauty customer “redefining luxury”. In other words, Glossier
views CEM as not only singular purchasing experiences, as a customer journey map, but
also what experience women have with the brand as a whole - how they feel about them-
selves, using the products they bought, how they feel looking through Glossier’s social
media posts, how they feel being asked for their opinions on beauty. This is one of the
things that ended up differentiating Glossier from numerous other beauty brands.

39
5.5 Social media marketing
Instagram was picked out of the social media platforms Glossier uses because of its im-
portance in their digital marketing. It has been referred to by the CTO as the primary
platform Glossier uses for customer engagement. Mainly because this is where glossier
gets most of its UGC, by reposting some of the customer conversations, pictures of prod-
ucts in use, even casual pictures of pets, which enables a down-to-earth and approachable
brand perception. Anonymous (2020) opined that sharing UGC is only natural when a
brand is so close to its customers. Glossier’s influencers are real, regular people. They are
the fans who engage on Instagram and are present at the pop-up events. Their Instagram
accounts might not have hundreds of thousands of followers, but they ensure the brand is
talked about. To top it off, from their social accounts, people led towards a personalized
page on Glossier where they can buy their top-favorite products. According to Christine
(2019), social media is now the best tool for building brand loyalty, it’s no longer just
facilitating engagement and following trends. As stated in the theoretical framework,
referencing Harper (2020) – Nowadays, social media has become dominnaly present in
daily life, it’s crucial for marketers to understand how millenial users communicate across
different social media channels and to work on creating customized messages that work
with the default rules of each of those channels.
Hart, (2019) stated that brands have to connect with their audiences through their strategy
of posting on social media,. She also stated that Instagram is the best platform for creating
that connection, because it has shown the highest engagement rates.

5.6 Glossier’s brand trust

In terms of brand trust, the author made a conscious decision to focus on digital marketing
strategies, not involving customer service in stores, product quality, packaging quality,
etc. The visual appeal of Glossier stores was mentioned only because they were
specifically designed to be photographed and posted about on social media, to be used as
UGC or to enable the customers to further promote the brand digitally.

Kahn (2013, p.21,23) wrote that in addition to reacting emotionally to brands, consumers
typically need to trust a brand to buy one of its products. Kotler (2016, p.109) advised
professionals to build brands that behave like humans; brands that are approachable and
likable, but also vulnerable. To be driven by core values, human-centric brands treat

40
customers as friends, becoming an integral part of their lifestyle. Human-centric
marketing is the key to building brand attraction in the digital era as brands that managed
to humanize themselves will be more differentiated. Crosby and Zak (2015, p.23) also
concluded that the key principle in building brand trust for marketers is to create well-
constructed, compelling narratives that emphasize people’s struggles that the brand was
able to help resolve or ease.
Therefore, Glossier was able to facilitate brand trust is the fact that they understood their
customers’ deepest anxieties and desires. Before, women were afraid to share beauty se-
crets in fear of being judged. This stigma roots from deep societal issues of female op-
pression, that transfers into beauty – women have been previously ashamed to admit to
what they were doing to increase their attractiveness, since talking about beauty “inside
information” was a sort of a taboo in society, to a certain extent. Glossier shared that
inside information on the beauty routines of famous influential women in modern society,
which felt almost intimate to their customers.

Hart (2019) wrote that YouTube vloggers and the “Insta-famous” made the beauty indus-
try as transparent as it is now. Before these trends, beauty brands failed to showcase real
experiences of real women and instead, focused on the illusion of perfection. “There’s
this desire to connect with other women,” Weiss told Business Insider (2019). By creating
conversations with celebrities, line as Kim Kardashian and Karlie Kloss, even her fellow
beauty brand founders like Bobbie Brown, and sharing them with Glossier’s customer
base she enabled women to a glimpse of their ways to go about beauty and see what
products they were using. After that, she simply used the knowledge she collected to
kickstart the product manufacturing process, keeping the connection with her commu-
nity to craft the products women actually wanted, concluded Bruner (2016). Weiss herself
noted that even magazines could not afford to share the kind of personal information.
Featuring high-profile women, that her customers looked up to in The Top Shelf column
if her blog made women feel as if they were sharing beauty tips and gossip with their
friends. They humanized the beauty aspect, making it feel inclusive and easy, unlike be-
fore - it’s easy to forget that sharing beauty secrets was unacceptable before social media
and it wasn’t so long ago. Women experienced the fear of judgment for sharing what
products they used if there were many, and especially uncovering the time, the energy,
and the amount of money it took them to look good. (Hart, 2019)

41
Glossier’s customers trust the brand because it’s approachable, honest, and because of
how Glossier makes their customers feel. Harper (2020) noted that 77% of teens today
prefer ads that show real people in real situations and 61 percent want diverse families in
advertising. They want to see people like them in the creative messaging of the brands
they buy from – people who not only look like them, but share their beliefs.
In 2016, Emily Weiss stated that Glossier’s goal is to help women feel more comfortable
with their natural beauty, instead of using makeup as a "mask."

Glossier’s brand trust is achieved through carefully thought-through strategies, that

involve listening and communicating with their customer base across several social media
channels; having a unique brand identity – striving for authenticity, positioning
themselves as acceptive of all with their core values and brand message and encouraging
their customers to do the same; they have a way of creating products that involves the
customers into the process, making them co-creators of the brand. People tend to believe
in their own creations, so what better way to make customers trust the brand and the
product, than make them a part of it?

5.7 Findings

This research study aimed to answer one question:

What digital marketing strategies can make your customers trust your brand more?

As a result of the conducted case study, the author was able to come up with the following:

- Creating a unique brand identity, in other words, creating a strong differentiation

between the brand in question and competitors. That can be achieved through obtaining
a distinctive logo, brand color palette, and making all brand attributes correlate with each
other.
- Involving customers in product creation, to ensure the customers actually need the
product, aiming to solve their problems and satisfy their needs, moreover to facilitate a
sentimental connection between the product and the customer, and lastly making the cus-
tomers felt heard and their opinion considered.
- Social listening for tracking customer data and being informed of any arising issues,
comments, discussions about the brand, its image, or the products. Customer engagement

42
through social media platforms for building strong customer bonds, that are extremely
valuable when branding and marketing products.
- Customer experience management for building brand loyalty, e.g., turning all inter-
actions with the brand online and offline into meaningful experiences, ones that stay with
customers, working the “marketing magic” long after the interaction with the brand and\or
purchase.
- Instagram marketing. Nowadays, Instagram is a widely-used social platform, domi-
nantly used by millennials, where each user is a content creator in their own way. This
allows for usage of User Generated Content, as well as close customer interaction which
facilitates brand trust, a positive experience of being featured by a brand, and ensures the
fact that the brand feels welcoming and approachable.

5.8 Recommendations for further research

Due to new tendencies arising constantly in the digital world and beauty industry, that
influence consumer behavior and reasons for developing trust towards brands, this re-
search can be continuous and never really end.
The next researcher could look closely into other social platforms, for example Twitter.
Glossier and other beauty brands use Twitter a lot for having conversations with cus-
tomers. Due to its requirement to a certain amount of characters per tweet, the answers
to questions a brand can ask will be short and straight to the point. There is no room for
formalities, which makes the brand interactions very casual. One could explore the in-
fluence of this phenomenon on the forming of brand trust.
All in all, the possibilities for research in digital marketing are truly endless, and brand
trust influences are shifting constantly with the events occurring in the world; having to
do with societal changes, politics, environmental issues, and psychological research ad-
vancements.

43
6 CONCLUSION

These days, consumers are more critical and demand more authenticity from brands.
Many won’t buy from a brand if they don’t agree with its core values. Since everything
is so exposed, as a result of complete transparency facilitated by social media and the fact
that consumers communicate with each other quickly and efficiently, sharing their expe-
riences with brands. Having a carefully thought-through marketing strategy that works
for the brand is indeed crucial nowadays. However, the strategy can’t be just a façade.
When it comes to the beauty industry, most beauty brands target millennials, and millen-
nials become loyal to brands that are genuine and truthful. These core values have to
translate support for the ethnic minorities, the LGBTQ+ community, be body and\or skin
positive, in other words, celebrate diversity in all forms and be approachable.
Having conducted this case study, it can be concluded that Glossier’s team is aware of
these tendencies and in some ways, has even been a creator of such trends in the beauty
community. They make sure their brand image is clearly understood, is positive, inspir-
ing, and unique. They value their customer relationships and keep their clients in high
regard, supporting those relationships with inclusivity and constant engagement across
several social media channels. Their digital content only supports their positive brand
image, maintaining a down-to-earth tone, which looks effortless, seeing as they use UGC
as their main asset. This ensures that customers feel heard, easing the process of content
creation for Glossier at the same time. Glossier’s customers trust them because the brand
listens to them, respects them as equals, and asks what their problem is, instead of pre-
senting unsolicited solutions.

44
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