Grown Up Thinking

Monday evening I wandered downtown in search of Beauty 2.0, an Internet Week panel discussion about the future of the beauty industry in social media. Not knowing what to expect (except that two members of Rachel Zoe Inc would be in attendance, OMG), what I witnessed was an hour discussion about social media, lip plumper, beauty metaphors and the power of peer to peer (aka Beauty and the Geek.

One of my favorite moments was when Tina Hedges, a L’Oreal/Estee Lauder vet, broke down the importance of humanizing your brand using terms even the most inexperienced beauty-maven could understand. Urging prestige brands to be more transparent and less exclusive she said, “At a cocktail party, I want to talk to the person who is open and warm, not the girl who’s sitting in the corner thinking she’s better than me”.

Adding to that was Karen Robinovitz, my new crazy-haired idol and founder of PurpleLabs.com. “The internet and social media are the most democratic system”, she said, “People are going to talk. Some of it may be negative, but it’s like popping a pimple. It’ll be red for a second, but then it will go away and the good stuff will bubble to the top in the end”. Wowzers, how’s that for a beauty metaphor?

More generally, the conversation took an interesting turn when another panel member lamented about how concerned the marketing industry is with “what’s next”. In the mad rush to discover the next foursquare/twitter/gamechanger, we often overlook what’s happening now, at this very moment. Deep thoughts, beauty panel, deep thoughts. Do you agree?

Tags: beauty 2.0, internet week

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 9th, 2010 at 6:55 pm and is filed under Interactive Marketing, Mr Youth News/ Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.