Brands tend to pick influencers with whom they know their target audience can identify with. Marketers know that if someone can ‘see’ themselves in the product, or the products advertising, they are more likely to identify with the product and make a purchase. However, this gets more complicated as your market becomes more diverse. How does a brand create a cohesive, appealing to their entire demographic, without turning anyone off to their products? While a complicated answer, one brand has mastered this.
What Do All Of These Women Have In Common?
These women are singers, models, actresses, athletes, comedians, television personalities, and activists – they are also all Cover-Girls. (Note: Not all Cover-Girls have been represented above)
CoverGirl has masted reaching the multi-demographic market. As a socially conscious company, they focused on celebrities who had a positive personal brand. CoverGirl has realized the magic formula before every other company. Their success can be tied to one basic question:
What Is Beauty?
“Beauty” has been such a buzz word and has had many negative associations surrounding the industry as a whole. Many people struggle to identify with a brand because they do not see themselves represented in it.
Within the group of above celebrities, many have made headlines on hot topics, defending their personal choice in lifestyle and looks, including Zendaya defending her dreadlocks, Ellen DeGeneres speaking out on being gay, and Tyra Banks shutting down body shamers.
Young women now see themselves as a face of a brand. CoverGirl’s success comes in representing all colors, backgrounds, shapes and sizes, in a very superficial industry.
How Can Your Brand Reach A Diverse Market Through Multi-Demographic Influences?
1) Know Your ENTIRE Audience
Ensure that there are no gaps in your target audience. Jayson DeMers a contributor for Forbes, has outlined 6 Steps to Decoding Your Target Audience. The final point that Jayson outlines, it “Who Do They Trust?” This is key in ensuring that you are creating a cohesive front of trustworthy people. Ensure that your influencers also cover each sub-market that you are targeting.
Hint! Before you decode your audience, make sure that it is clearly defined. Need help? Check out “How To Define Your Target Market”
2) Avoid Controversial or Polarizing Celebrities
When dealing with multiple influencers at once, it is typically a good idea to avoid controversial or polarizing celebrities. Kayne West says many off-the-cuff things and can be loved and hated by many within the same sentence. You want to ensure that you entire market feels welcomed by all influencers.
If a Cover-Girl was making negative comments about race, nationality or sexuality, the united front would be broken as the Cover-Girls’ represent celebrities of many minority groups.
You want to ensure that you trust your influencers that when they go out on appearances, whether for your brand or personally, that they are putting their best foot forward at all times. You do not want to have to hire a great PR firm at the end of the night to do damage control.
Hint! Here’s a cheat sheet of the 10 Most Controversial Celebrities
3) Ensure a Good Balance
Everyone has seen adds that have the “token” minority as a way to make the brand appear more inclusive to everyone. That just does not work. There needs to be a good balance of all of the faces representing your brand.
Many drugstore makeup brands carry a majority of their products for lighter skin while others carry a majority of products for darker skin. While CoverGirl continues to expand its line, they want to ensure that they have a wide enough variety of products and also influencers who represent all skin tones that can use their product (as shown above).
Bonus! CoverGirl even made #8 on the list of The 10 Best Foundations for Dark Skin Tones
If you are struggling to figure out how to create this mix, try to identify a persona for each demographic that your brand is targeting. Once you have identified your personas, identify how much of your market is made up of each. By ensuring that each group is accurately represented, you brand will feel inclusive to your entire diverse market.
Example: 20 Total Influencers
40% Persona 1: 8 Influencers
30% Persona 2: 6 Influencers
15% Persona 3: 3 Influencers
10% Persona 4: 2 Influencers
5% Persona 5: 1 Influencer
Follow these 3 simple rules and you’re on you way to success!
Images Soured Within
LUC Marketing 399 