Intro
For years I’ve had my eye on the lip creme from marc jacobs.com. I saw it as a unique opportunity to develop my own line of lip-care products with an emphasis on natural ingredients.
After a lot of experimentation and analysis, I’m happy to say that my lip care is now available at marcjacobs.com. The ingredients are all natural and come from the earth – no plant extracts or chemicals in sight!
While the product is absolutely amazing, what really made me think it was worth sharing was the opportunity to create some amazing value with my customers. Without other people going through my product, testing and enjoying it first, it would never have been developed at all!
Marc Jacobs and the Process of Re-Branding
Marc Jacobs, you cannot patent lip creme — the name is not a trademark.
That’s a great result to get out of the court battle, but when Marc Jacobs decides to start using “lip-creme” on his latest collection, he is following the same process he used for his first collection:
• He begins by contacting companies who use the term lip gel, as well as some brands that are in direct competition with him.
• He gets their reaction and determines what things may have been left out of descriptions or used in a confusing way.
This is an incredibly effective way of working in terms of getting feedback and understanding how people use your product. In fact, it can be one of the most powerful ways to create new value. Marc Jacobs did this with his first line of lip cremes: “I didn’t want it to be so simple or obvious – I wanted people to know why they were buying me – because I was making them feel good about themselves and their bodies.” His next line of lip cremes was even more blunt: “People said they had no idea what I was talking about. Some were offended; others were intrigued; some were scared; some bought my products because they thought it would help them make money faster; some bought it because they thought it wouldn’t make them any money; but all bought my products because my products made them feel good about themselves and their bodies!” (Marc Jacobs, p. xviii)
This is a classic case study in how you can leverage your customer base and word-of-mouth marketing channels to discover new value for them (and hopefully help you earn more). This is also an excellent way to test whether people like what you do before dropping tens of millions on advertising campaigns that will likely fail anyway (that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try!).
If none of these activities seem appealing enough for your company then maybe there are other ways you can reach out beyond your own customer base directly? Perhaps there is an opportunity for your customers to engage with your brand? How about starting up a crowdfunding campaign with other companies? There are many such websites that allow people to crowdfund their own projects on sites like Kickstarter or Indiegogo . If you do decide that this would be an interesting project for your company then here are several tips from former crowdfunding success stories:
• Create Your Product With
Marketing Marc Jacobs Lip Creme
Marc Jacobs Lip Creme is one of the most in-demand beauty products on the market. It’s a lip shadow that has been marketed by Marc Jacobs since 2006. In its simplest form, it’s a very opaque, intensely pigmented lip gloss (which is why it’s so useful). The product is branded as a “lip balm,” but it only provides a very thin layer of feel-good moisturization.
The greatest value of the Lip Creme comes from its ability to interact with skin. If you want to make your lips look plumper, for example, you apply it dry (so that it doesn’t become too shiny) and then use the balm as an extra layer of protection for your lips during dry winter days. The product also works wonders on prepping lips for eating out or partying at night.
Marc Jacobs was one of the first celebrities to embrace self-promotion through social media and has been using his celebrity status to create buzz around his products since 2006. His brand has grown gradually over time — as more celebrities have endorsed his products — and he’s sure to continue increasing his reach into mainstream media (especially with his upcoming film). But that doesn’t mean he can’t take advantage of new platforms like YouTube and Twitter to engage with potential consumers directly in real time (and build audience around these platforms).
And because he uses social media himself in promoting his products, he can be even more effective than traditional advertising agencies in communicating value directly with consumers. There are many ways you can apply this logic:
• Referral marketing: You can submit a review about your favorite product that people will want to see if they see yours by sharing linkages between your blog/website and Twitter or Facebook pages . This way, you are building awareness about your company as well as getting some free publicity for your product .
• Email marketing: You can send emails to people who are interested in buying from you (or who follow your company) asking them if they would be interested in talking about your product through email or online comments on other sites . You can also create an email newsletter for each of these newsletters so that you don’t have to spend all that time sending out emails every day. This way, you get exposure without having to spend all that money on direct mail campaigns.
• Social Media promotions: If someone shares something positive about Marc Jacobs
Branding a Product Through Social Media
While some brands are able to brand their products using large-scale social media campaigns, it is far from easy. The focus has been on getting your company’s message across, but the problem is that you have to create a brand for your product. A brand for your product is simply a way of describing your business and its strategy in such a way that people will remember why they want to buy it.
One of the main reasons we like marc jacobs yours to try lip creme and the other products in our line so much is because they are all good messages, on their own merits and in context (not just as part of a campaign). For example, you could say that marc jacobs yours to try lip creme works better than any other lip product on the market because it hydrates lips better than any other. Or you could say: “Use marc jacobs yours to try lip creme to get fit and stay healthy”. People would remember both messages even if they didn’t know what marc jacobs yours to try lip cream was or why you wanted them to use it.
But there’s another reason: branding approaches tend not to be focused enough on communicating the value of a product in isolation from its marketing message, which means the value of the product itself may be lost among all its marketing messaging. We call this “brand dilution”; it happens when brands get too big for their britches and dilute themselves so much that they lose their identity and become just another brand name.
To avoid this dilution we have developed two different approaches:
• Brand building — A fresh approach based around getting people interested in a specific value proposition (from an existing audience)
• Brand strengthening — A broader approach which tries hard to retain existing fans by making sure they understand the benefits of the brand (from new audiences)
We’re going with both approaches here — although I think it doesn’t hurt if we combine them since there are times when both don’t work together well (e.g., “healthier than most other eye creams on the market” versus “no additives or fillers so it won’t clog my pores”). We also think smaller companies can use these approaches more effectively than bigger ones since this allows them fewer resources and budget constraints. Both approaches should be
Why Marc Jacobs Lip Creme Looks Like a Success
Marc Jacobs Lip Creme is a cult classic. It started out as a trial run and has now been released to the public (in limited quantities). The product itself is not particularly special — it’s been around for years, it’s available at some drugstores and it’s cheap (only $20!). What makes Marc Jacobs Lip Creme so special is that the company behind this product has treated its customers like royalty: they are given free samples of it every single month, they have access to a private email list of people who are receiving the trial, and they receive a personalized thank you letter.
This is all done in order to help create loyalty for their brand. Their strategy seems to be about creating relationships rather than about building products. Marc Jacobs does not go “here” to sell lip creme — he goes “here” to buy relationships, which he can then leverage into new products.
This strategy works very well in some cases (as demonstrated by the success of their recent collaboration with LVMH, which resulted in much better quality products with fewer leaks) but it doesn’t seem like a winning formula for everyone who wants to launch a product in this market:
• If you want people to pay money for your product (as opposed to buying giveaways or giving away free samples), you should probably try different business models before you ship out your first batch of units because launching too early might not be sustainable if word-of-mouth isn’t big enough.
• If you want people who don’t already use your product to use it next time anyway (which isn’t exactly the case here with Marc Jacobs Lip Cream), you need something different from marketing: i.e., advertising materials (like press releases).
• And if you want users who don’t already have your product on their shelves — i.e., people who aren’t currently using your service — then you will also need something else besides marketing: e.g., an economic incentive program that rewards users based on how much they use your application; an incentive program that pays users based on how much they spend on the application; etc..
As we talk about this stuff when we discuss branding and design, there are two common questions we get asked: “Why do I get these things? Why do I need this? Why do I need these things? Who pays attention when I talk about them
Conclusion
It has been a pleasure to read your post. I think that you have written an excellent summary of the things we should be thinking about when launching our product.
I do agree with the summary of the key takeaways, but there are some things that I would add to it.
First, I think there is a misconception amongst some people (that may also be true amongst myself) that they need to sit down and write a business plan during their launch. There are plenty of products out there that simply don’t need a business plan before they go live. Take, for example, Twitter: it doesn’t need one before their 1st tweet goes up because it is doing so well already.
Second, I think the reason why people don’t get this is that they aren’t very good at thinking about markets and businesses in general; this leads them to make decisions based on what seems most logical at the moment and not on what will actually help them achieve their goals (e.g., many sites like Squidoo are run by experts who specialize in market research). So let me break down what your summary says into three parts:
1.) The market – What kind of market can we target?
2.) The product – How does our product fit into this market?
3.) The value proposition – How does our product make sense for those who want to use it?
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