Buddhist Marketer

Dear Santa Claus

I have worked very hard this year and despite the fact that I don’t grow as rapidly as I used to, would still like some new toys for my non-denominational Christmas celebration.  I have conducted extensive research and a thorough needs assessment in order to whittle my list down to three items:

1. Redken Real Control Conditioner.  Because cranky, difficult-to-manage ethnic girls with cranky, difficult-to-manage hair need intensely nourish and moisturize our high-maintenance hair.
2. Redken Extreme Anti-Snap leave-in treatment.  Because, as you know, a dark-haired girl who gets highlights will have difficulty growing out her hair if it keeps breaking off and stuff.
3. Redken Dandruff Control Leave-In Treatment.  This way, if my scalp feels itchy in a spot but I just got my hair did, I don’t need to ruin my ‘do by washing it with Pureology’s DandruffScalpCure for color-treated hair.

By the way, you may want to get your mitts onto Redken for Men’s mint rush hair and body wash to detoxify your skin after flying around in the air all night long …

Love,

Anittah’s hair

Does Being Hot Help The Bottom Line?

Confession:  I couldn’t read ShoeMoney.com because I didn’t want to look at this guy’s face while doing so and there was no way to scroll away from it.

Confession:  I love the show Millionaire Matchmaker, and was intrigued when one of the millionaires several weeks ago was the CEO of a .com I hadn’t heard of.  Curious, I checked the stats, and it turns out no one else has heard of it, either.

However, his appearing on the reality show gave his company some traffic.

Me wonders:  would his company have gotten the same amount of traffic if he were less visually compelling? Would he even been aired on Millionaire Matchmaker to begin with had he looked like ShoeMoney guy (who seems to have an actual business that is likely worth more than Stazzle)?

What do you think?  Does being hot help the bottom line?

Smells Like Marketing

From Faye Penn’s “making SCENTS” in the InStyle MAKEOVER 2009:

… parfumeurs often resort to elaborate back stories to sell their fragrances.  Consider the promotional text accompanying three fall launches.

There’s YSL’s woodsy, floral Parisienne, a new fragrance whose bottle has “vibrating facets evoking Paris, city of light, city of lust, the labyrinth of streets in which you can lose yourself.”

Then there’s Marc Jacobs’s spice-infused Lola, whose muse is “sexy, with a fun, flirtatious wink.  Coquettish and a bit provocative … Playfully alluring and irresistibly tempting.”

And what about My Glow, the baby-soft new whiff from Jennifer Lopez, for whom “now is the most perfect moment in her life.  Poised between pride in the past and promise for the future, she feels fulfilled as never before.  Her spirit is soothed with serenity, her heart overflowing with tenderness.  There is no deeper love, no greater happiness than this.  No words can describe it, but a fragrance can capture it.”

Of course, the author’s queries to an informally-assembled panel of ten men at a Manhattan bar during happy hour regarding how they’d describe each of the fragrances above resulted in zero consensus regarding what each of the scents conjured; Lola conjured thoughts ranging from “very conservative” to “cougar.”

The complexity of marketing a product like fragrance is a function of the complexity of consumer’s noses — the memories of our olfactory receptors are much more unique than visual memory, which does not experience much variation from Amurrican to Amurrican.  Our image-heavy media-drenched culture is relatively homogenous as far as eyeball stimulation goes, whereas I guarantee you that the scent of your mom’s home-cookin’ and the things you smelled breezing along the highway on a summer afternoon were markedly different from what my nose was exposed to.  (Rice; cow shit; mint farms.)

Which makes me wonder:  does this mean that finding a smart marketer is all the more important when the product you’re peddling is a fragrance? Or — given that the “story” is so profoundly arbitrary — can you simply select some random writer and call it a day?

My write-up of Viktor & Rolf’s Flowerbomb on Amazon has been found useful by 90% of the people who bothered to rate it:

I love Flowerbomb. Wearing it, I feel strong, powerful, sexy, and incredibly woman. It’s the scent version of gorgeous 4″ heels, great legs, and a “I know who I am, and I like it” swagger.

Yeah, okay, whatever that means.

The Big Mac of haircolor

Older sister (Chicago resident):  “What?  You’re getting your hair done in Indiana?”

Gay friend (LA / Paris / London / NYC):  “You’re trusting someone in Indiana to do your hair?”

I spotted angry gray hairs poking up a few weeks ago through my brunette hair forest and knew I needed a color touch-up.  I ran out of time, though, but knew I’d have some hours to kill while home in Indiana (I’m still here).

Fortunately, Redken has a stringent certification process that allows certain colorists to become Redken certified.  Think of it as the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for colorists.  I’m not sure if the certification process involves

• Jumping through literal hoops
• Scaling walls
• Making a knockout menu with Thanksgiving leftovers

but I have been present for at least some of their education seminars and must say:  they do not mess around.  Stylists and colorists all over the nation attend their continuing education seminars and the information imparted is top-notch.  I’ve learned so much simply as an occasional interloper and am very impressed by their educators’ ability to own a room.

Plus, let’s be honest:  my regular colorist and stylist are from outside Detroit and outside Columbus, Ohio respectively, so let’s not pretend that New Yorkers have some kind of monopoly on the ability to create great hair.  How many Miss Americas have come from New York state, anyway?

Anyway, Redken’s website has a salonfinder tool that allows you to punch in a zip code and search for certified stylists, elite salons, the whole works.  Which is how I found First Impressions Hair Design at 105 N. Fifth Street in Goshen, Indiana ((574) 534-1806).

I won’t belabor this point but

• My colorist turned out to be a high school classmate of my younger sister and also knows my little brother.  She did an awesome job and I’m glad I said, “Do whatever you think is best; I trust you.”  Thank you, Maria J. Picco!  Move to New York!
• Color costs in the $200 range in NYC before tip but even including tip and some product (Redken’s Smooth Down Sleek Obedience, which helps keep the fuzzy strays at my hairline off my forehead), I was only out $160.
• I feel like Redken’s certification process is the equivalent of the Big Mac.  A Big Mac tastes the same whether you’re at O’Hare or Penn Station and there’s something comforting about that (see also:  Howard Johnson; the suburbanization of America).  If a colorist in the sticks (quote unquote) can do a bang-up job on my color (IMHO; true test is when my friend Rachel inspects), then I feel confident that any colorist certified by Redken is going to rock.

This reminds me, as I type, of the Bar Exam for Marketers.  It would be interesting if one could take a diagnostic that not only assessed tactical skills for marketers but also biases and approaches, so that you could know the temperament of the marketer you’re about to hire.

In a world fragmented by mobility and decreasing strong ties, third-party badges a la Good Housekeeping, Redken, and the like seem to have increasing importance.  These certification mechanisms seem to have supplanted the kind of information that one would’ve gathered over apple pie and tea with the unofficial town mayors circa 1956.

Or circa 2008 in small town Indiana. But, then again, not every town has a family as cool as the Eberly’s.

Lipstick as metaphorical Wellbutrin

A curious alignment of the stars must be in order:  yesterday I blogged about my psychic battles with makeup and today I had a kickoff meeting with my very own official first client since flying the corporate America coop.

Said client?  A business line within the world’s number one cosmetics group.

From their 2007 annual report, bolding theirs:

The [company name redacted] adventure has been founded from the outset on a fundamental conviction:  cosmetics are an expression of a universal dream of well-being and inner harmony.  They help everyone to fully express their personality, to be self-assured and open in their relations with others, and to fulfil their potential.  They can give vulnerable people the desire and the strength to rebuild their lives or resume their place in society.  Beauty is useful and indeed essential.

My combat-boot clad inner adolescent is busy Xeroxing issues of her zine ranting against the superficial nature of mainstream American society.  My three-inch-stilleto-with-fishnets clad adult self recognizes, without judgment, the truth of the blockquote above.

Speaking of all things beauty:  happy birthday, Suzyelle!  See you at the biergarten in a few.

Lipstick as metaphorical pitbull

Those of you who remember my “Beauty, the male gaze, feminism, & my ovaries” vlog know that I Jello-wrestle with What It Means To Be A Woman (TM).  From the tweaked transcript (the creation of which um made me respect umm public speakers ummm all that much more ummmmm):

As women who are raised to value ourselves as a function of our intelligence rather than as a function of our beauty, I’m wondering if (and I appreciate the possibility of the dialectic here) that competes with our inner cavewomen.  I’m thinking about Lacan and the male gaze and I’m recognizing as I get older how there’s something very powerful about a man that looks at a woman.  How much is my not letting myself be valued by my appearance an act of aggression against the male gaze?  How much of that is therefore in competition with my ultimate desire to be a mother and have a family?

And so as I continued to work my way through the nonfiction pieces in the Winter 2007 issue of The Massachusetts Review, you’ll be able to see why I began nursing a li’l crush on one Cassandra McGovern, author of “Something Special in the Air”.  In this piece she brings her reader with her to stewardess training camp in the summer of 1964:

I knew I would fail the makeup test right away…

It upset me to look into a mirror...  I didn’t buy a full-length mirror until I was thirty-four.

The other girls seemed as if a mirror was a lover.  They stared, they cooed, they twisted their hair, they giggled, they never took their eyes off the object of their affection.  I was more interested in why they would look at themselves so adoringly.  Perhaps they had more time or had been rewarded for made-up faces.  I had just graduated from college, while most of the women I met were high school graduates with one or two years of work experience.  They had no doubt used makeup to be more pleasing to the public as secretaries or models.  The girls at the small liberal arts college I attended were not fixated on skin applications.

She continues:

The instructor’s direction was to select a foundation, a translucent powder.  I had no idea which container this might be, and clumsily played with opening the round box, glancing at the girls on both sides as if I were trying to cheat on an exam for an answer.  Psst!  Where is the foundation powder?  This little pink box? Seeing I was at a loss, the supervisor came to my table and asked how I was doing.  How could I tell her that I never used any makeup?  My complexion was always a good color that I attributed to not ruining it with expensive, unnecessary stuff.  How can I get out of this session?  Wouldn’t it be okay to have one flight attendant without makeup?

“I don’t have much experience with putting on makeup.”

“You don’t use makeup, dear?”  The makeup artist hired to help us become airline beauties seemed puzzled.

Oh, department of been there.  I remember once meeting my high school boyfriend in the lounge after having tried to put on the makeup I purchased for $1.00 from some postcard inserted in Sassy or seventeen.

“Oh my God,” he said as I strode towards him, happy to see him and excited to walk to the movies.  “What’s wrong with your face?”

Cue immediately running to the nearest restroom, thankfully a single, to remove every last trace of makeup with a brown paper towel softened with tepid tap water.

McGovern concludes her piece with broader ruminations about life and changing patterns of behavior:

I identified with men, and struggled to become the woman I am. Once I studied behavior in graduate school, I realized why the contradiction:  though I was frightened about everything new, I took the risk of trying.  When I successfully tried new behaviors, and taught other women how to stand up for themselves, whether it was asking someone to stop smoking at a nearby table or returning a product to a store, the reward was a reduction of anxiousness.  I found that my fearfulness was slowly changing into confidence.  Doing or saying what I want, or mastering a new skill even while fearful, are what allowed me to change.

I will say that while it used to be a source of deep anxiety, ever since a makeup artist at Sephora (thank you Salome, wherever you are!) took the time this summer to personally walk me through each step of the process, putting my makeup on in the morning is now a rather enjoyable part of my day.

I’m no longer scared of all those bottles and brushes.

And I’m almost no longer scared of trying to be beautiful.

(Picture taken as soon as I got home from The School of Salome.)

Beauty, the male gaze, feminism, & my ovaries

I’d like to make my blog more accessible so I’m going to work on getting a transcript of this, too.

Added 10/2/2008:

As women who are raised to, um, to really value our intelligence but more importantly value ourselves as a function of our intelligence rather than as a function of our beauty, I’m wondering if, and I appreciate the possibility of the dialectic here, I’m wondering if that competes with our inner cavewomen, and I’m thinking about Lacan, which is something that Rachel also taught me, and the male gaze, and I’m recognizing as I get older how, um, seductive, not seductive in a bad way, but, how really, um, there’s something very powerful about a man that, um, looks at a woman, and, you know, women look at babies and men look at women, and you know, how much is my not letting myself be valued by my appearance how much of that is an act of aggression almost against the male gaze and how much of that is therefore in competition with my ultimate desire to be a mother and have a family and is there an inherent tension between wanting to be um, or feeling as if my self-worth is partly a function of external accolades — and my hair is so big that I’m hearing the crackling of my hair against the bag of the chair, awesome — um, so that’s just something I’m thinking about, I don’t know what the answer is, I don’t know necessarily that any of that is true, surely there’s gotta be an elegant way to figure out what that balance is, but I’m also — you know, I don’t want to be that woman that makes a man feel that (3:37) that I don’t admire him, because I’m so trained to project a certain je ne sais quoi you know I don’t want to be that person who’s terrible on a first date or that you know sort of scares men away with, with whatever because I mean the reality is there’s so many men that I’ve admired or that I do admire and I kind of know that I act like an idiot or I just don’t know how to act, umm, if there’s a sort of frisson of potential romantic pleasure that’s in the ether, and um, I don’t know if that’s also tied into my discomfort or lack of ease in allowing myself to court the male gaze and simply be beautiful and walk around with huge hair in Soho so that people, men from Montenegro can come up to me and tell me about the airplanes they design and ask for my number, so I don’t know, I don’t know what the answers are, I mean I would like to think (5:07) that it’s possible for my future daughters, named Odessa and Jakarta, um, to be both, to be comfortable being beautiful but also comfortable performing quote unquote and have the grace to transition seamlessly — I don’t know. Hope you guys had a great weekend.