Hello and welcome to the Smart Beauty podcast. I'm your host, Vyla Levy, beauty journalist
and founder of Copilot branding agency Smart Beauty Creative. We're here to create your
brand voice and craft the story behind it. Today I'm going to talk about why we are a
feminist branding agency. Now that word, it can provoke a lot of reactions in people and
to be honest, it used to in me. I've always considered myself a feminist. People are kind
of scared of that term because there's a lot of baggage, sadly, that is attached to it.
Firstly, the idea of white feminism, the fact that women from minority groups are kind of
shut out of the discussion. There seems to be a kind of monoculture in the current feminist
movement, which is a shame. But that's a whole other conversation for another podcast. And
also for me, there was some aspects of feminism that I didn't agree with or some feminists
that I didn't particularly like. And I think you worry that people are going to associate
you with certain ideas or certain people once you align yourself to a particular movement.
But it's something that also I didn't think I needed to really shout about when talking
about my agency, because I assumed that that would already be kind of baked in to what
we were offering. But I was chatting with somebody the other day who is a branding expert, and
I was telling her about the ethos and the mission behind smart beauty and why the beauty
world is going through much needed change. And the way we talk to customers has changed
drastically from generations before where the language was very patronising, women were
being spoken to like idiots basically. And I say women because they were the ones who
were being marketed to. We were the ones that were mainly buying products or considered
to be the ones who were mainly buying beauty products, flowery adjectives, not really telling
us how the products worked or what was in them, not really explaining the science behind
the products. Thankfully, that's all changed with the rise of digital marketing and social
media and DTC brands. Consumers are far more informed and savvy and cynical than they were
in the past. And they're putting brands through their paces, people are having to come up
with the goods and show the receipts and say this is the science, this is why this product
works and why you should spend your hard earned money on it. So my kind of vision with smart
beauty was to help brands navigate that and create an authentic message that helps provoke
intelligent discussion, shows the brands credentials and shows that they have strong scientific
evidence to back up their claims. So basically talking to consumers in a way that doesn't
patronize them, doesn't belittle them, doesn't play on their insecurities or create problems
just so they can sell products on how to quote unquote solve them. So yeah, very problematic
industry and it still is today, but it is changing. And with smart beauty creative, I
want to be at the forefront of that. So this person I was speaking to said, well, it sounds
like your approach is very feminist and you should make that front and center. And I think
that there is something to be said for that, because sadly, the beauty world has been very
male dominated. If you look at, I don't know if you ever watched Mad Men, but that that
kind of era, it was marketing men coming up with concepts, deciding how these products
were going to be sold and marketed. They were the ones kind of at the helm of a lot of beauty
brands. But now things have changed. Now there's more female founders. We're still waiting for
women founders to get investment, especially women of color. So that is another aspect
of what we do here at Smart Beauty Creative. We want to empower these female founders and
create core verbal strategy that's not going to just focus on getting the customers on
board, but also focus on investors and media and other key stakeholders that are going
to be pivotal in whether this brand is a success or not. So that's kind of the core mission.
And I think that there's nothing wrong with saying that we're feminists in that spirit,
that we are putting a fresh feminist perspective on the way we talk about beauty, the way we
market beauty. I think a lot of the time, beauty and feminism are seen as mutually exclusive.
So the industry was previously seen as very fickle. If you kind of wore makeup, you were
a victim of the patriarchy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, all that kind of common criticism.
And while the beauty industry definitely has elements within it that are very problematic
and probably ring true in that respect, I don't think that the beauty industry as a whole
should be written off in that way. I think that there is so much scope in this industry
for female empowerment, for women to feel good about themselves, to create products
where they feel good, but it's not based, it doesn't necessarily hinge around looking
good or looking good just to feel good, if that makes sense.
I think the beauty world is a great place where you can find lots of welcoming communities,
much more so than the fashion world, I would say. Beauty is far less elitist, it's more
democratic, more people can afford to buy nice beauty products than they can afford
a couture dress. And that's what I love about it. And that's what I want to shout about
and just the amazing people within it, especially the women within it. And I think feminism
can be a huge part of that. I think it also, it paves a new way for beauty marketing because
I think a lot of the criticism that gets leveled at the beauty industry, a lot of that is to
do with how products are marketed. And I'm very much against playing on people's insecurities
in order to sell products. I think all these new indie brands or corporate brands with
an indie spirit are waking up to that fact and realising that it's not about approaching
it in a negative way and playing on people's hangups and making people feel bad about themselves
and fear mongering. It's about helping people use beauty products as tools of empowerment,
tools of self care, but not relying on them just so they can feel good about themselves
because that's where I feel the distinction lies. And that's where beauty marketing and
language can become very toxic. So that's what I want to change and also provide, as
I say, a female take on how beauty products should be marketed and how we talk about beauty.
I think that we still desperately need that. I think we're moving in the right direction,
but a lot of brands still don't get it. And especially I have to say in the fragrance
world, a lot of brands are still falling back on these old tropes where they feel the need
to market a bottle of fragrance with a celebrity or with a half naked model gazing seductively
at the camera. There are some amazing perfume campaigns, iconic ones, but I feel like that
way of selling perfume has become very antiquated and doesn't really chime with modern consumers
and the reasons that we buy perfume and the way that we relate to it. Just selling perfume
as a way to say, oh, you know, you'll smell like the celebrity or it'll make you smell
more seductive so you can allure and admire. I mean, there is that there is that element,
but there are so many other ways that you can enjoy perfume and there are so many angles
that you can approach it from. And I just feel that beauty brands should just be a bit more
experimental and just have more fun and actually hire people who represent the customers that
they're trying to reach. So that is why I would say that we are a proudly feminist branding
agency. I think a lot of our wording and language is inspired by feminist authors. And it was
something that I was always interested in when I was a teenager growing up, I would
read a lot of feminist texts from Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own, to novels or short
novels like The Yellow Wallpaper or feminist texts like Jane Eyre, for example. And there
was something about that that I always wanted to kind of carry with me whatever career path
I decided to go down. So there's something quite nice about that that I feel like with
Smart Beauty I'm helping to contribute in whatever way I can to the feminist discussion
and move the needle a bit more. I read a book called The Beauty Myth by Naomi Woolf and
that really stuck with me. To be honest with you, it was a very long time ago that I read
it, but it was obviously very scathing of beauty and how products are sold to women.
And while I completely take those concerns on board, I think that we are a bit more open-minded
when it comes to getting beautified and wanting to look good. It doesn't necessarily mean
that we're victims of the patriarchy. So in that spirit, that's what I think we're about
here at Smart Beauty Creative. If it sounds like something that you could get on board
with that you think your brand could benefit from, please get in touch and you can arrange
a discovery call on our website and we can chat a bit further about how we can work
together.
I hope you enjoyed that episode. All links will be in the show notes and feel free to
visit SmartBeautyCreative.com or visit us over on Instagram to find out more about what
we do. And if you enjoyed listening, please don't forget to write and review Smart Beauty
on iTunes as it helps people find us. See you next time.