Mature women are spending more money across most beauty and personal care categories than younger women, so why aren’t more brands targeting them in their marketing? This week, I’m looking at campaigns focused on “mature women,” which often refers to female consumers above 40 or 50 years old. Additionally, new category launches from brands including Charlotte Tilbury and Josie Maran, Jake Gyllenhaal’s new fragrance gig, and can’t-miss headlines.
Anchored by “Mature Women’s Day,” Laura Geller’s campaign targeting women over 40 results in 45% sales increase and a media halo effect
According to new 2023 data from market research company Mintel, women over 40 spend more money on most personal care and beauty categories, including skin care, body products and hair care, as well as oral care and deodorant. Where younger shoppers spend just slightly more, however, is in cosmetics and fragrance. This signals that employing more nuanced messaging to reach mature women is a growth opportunity for industry marketers.
“Convenience, long-lasting and time-saving [product] claims are of increased importance to older women, with many of them willing to spend more on products that help them save time,” Carson Kitzmiller, Mintel beauty and personal care senior analyst, told Glossy. What’s more, “because of their established routines and experience with the category, women aged 40-plus are not consulting on their [beauty and personal care] purchases with friends and family, unlike younger consumers.”
She added, “We see that women under 55, particularly those 35-54, are still interested in experimenting with new brands and products, but this drastically decreases among women 55-plus.”
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Kitzmiller also reported that, whereas younger consumers may use their beauty rituals as “self-care” to boost their moods, mature women more often think of their beauty routines as functional.
Relying on influencers and viral social media or word-of-mouth marketing may be less effective on older consumers. Instead, they are “leaning into their personal knowledge and communication from trusted brands as indicators of efficacy and trust,” said Kitzmiller.
For the brands successfully reaching older women, the results can speak for themselves.
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One is Laura Geller. The brand’s “Own Your Age” campaign, which launched last week, synced with National Mature Women’s Day — falling on April 9 each year, the holiday was coined and registered by Laura Geller in 2021. The campaign featured advertisements and short narrative videos with comedian Leanne Morgan and promoted a one-day, age-based discount on the brand’s DTC site, which it offered for the third year in a row.
“If you’re 52 [years old], you get 52% off. If you’re 73, you get 73% off. So we’re truly financially rewarding you for aging,” said Sara Mitzner, vp of brand marketing at AS Beauty, parent company of Laura Geller, Julep Beauty, Cover FX, Bliss and Mally Beauty.
The day’s top sellers were the brand’s Baked Balance-n-Brighten Foundation, Baked Starter Kit, Blending Beauties Brush Set and Own Your Age Kit.
Laura Geller used marketing software Klaviyo to facilitate the promotion’s logistics: Customers traded their contact information and birthdate for bespoke discount codes that appeared immediately but could be used for a week following the holiday. Mitzner told Glossy the brand issued 44,731 codes, 18,382 of those going to new customers. More than 4,000 shoppers made immediate purchases. For the day, the average time spent on site was up by a minute and 28 seconds, sales jumped 45% from the same time the week before, and bounce rate was down 24%, Mitzner told Glossy.
In addition, the brand also saw a halo effect across earned media. New York City’s Fox 11 News and “Good Day New York” covered the sale, which resulted in sales and traffic jumps. The sale was also covered in Forbes, Prevention, Ad Age, Happi, New Beauty and The Drum, on the Gloss Angeles Podcast and through a story pick-up on Yahoo.
“[We’re] proud of the expansiveness and range of the kind of press we got,” Mitzner said. “It speaks to the multi-faceted aspect of the campaign.”
Laura Geller is known for makeup for mature skin and only features women above 40 in its campaigns, but this campaign was especially powerful because it was “financially motivated and action-oriented,” said Mitzner, adding, “It’s taking it one step beyond the visual representation we do day in and day out.”
Through its social media accounts, Laura Geller regularly features content created by well-known celebrities, including Fran Drescher, Patricia Heaton, Vanna White, Angie Harmon and Jennie Garth. “When I’m reaching out to [mature] talent, I love to hear they can’t participate because they’re already working with another beauty brand, just because it’s so rare,” Mitzner told Glossy. “We’re often the only ones playing in that space.”
Also launched on Mature Women’s Day was a campaign by L’Oréal Paris called “Worth It Résumé” featuring brand ambassadors Helen Mirren, Eva Longoria, Jane Fonda, Andie MacDowell, Kate Winslet and Aja Naomi King, the last of which was the youngest at 39 years old.
The focus of the L’Oréal Paris campaign is to provide visibility for women and an opportunity to discuss the extreme pressures women face to feel successful in their careers. The campaign is a brand-building endeavor for L’Oréal Paris, with no products or ingredients mentioned. Included videos and imagery center around the aforementioned women adding their failures to their LinkedIn profiles to highlight how setbacks lead to success.
But despite growing visibility in beauty campaigns and changing rhetoric around how mature women are represented, Mintel’s Kitzmiller noted that more than half of women over age 40 are ambivalent about new “pro-aging” messaging in ads. They’re instead “looking for products designed for their age [with] clear and direct messaging [about efficacy, instead of] superficial shifts in language around aging.”
According to Ron Robinson, cosmetic chemist and founder of the skin-care brand BeautyStat, top concerns among his mature customers include deep wrinkles, expression lines, loss of skin firmness, sagging and hyperpigmentation. He targets these in R&D with higher concentrations of vitamin C, retinoids, hydroxy acids and peptides.
“Our research shows that these are the biggest concerns for mature women,” he told Glossy. “There is no best practice or silver bullet to formulate for this group. It really requires experimenting and testing.”
Robinson said that speaking to mature women about the efficacy of BeautyStat’s Wrinkle Relaxing Moisturizer has made it a bestseller. “On our social media and website, we shined a spotlight on mature women — unlike most brands that glorify Gen Z and millennials on their social media — which created a ton of engagement,” he said. “This resulted in many consumers seeking more info on our moisturizer and then purchasing it.”
“Opportunities remain to capture this powerful generation of women,” said Mintel’s Kitzmiller. “While they may be established in certain [beauty and personal care] behaviors and routines, they are still looking for improvement in their skin health and appearance.”
Executive moves:
- Jessica Alba is set to step down as the chief creative officer of The Honest Company, the personal care, beauty, baby and household product company she founded in 2011. She will remain on the company’s board.
- After 12 years with the brand, makeup artist and Veil Cosmetics founder Sébastien Tardif will be stepping down from his role as CEO to focus on other creative projects, according to the brand.
News to know:
- Neutrogena is closing its Los Angeles headquarters and laying off 84 employees. All operations are being moved to New Jersey where parent company Kenvue Inc is based.
- Theatrical cosmetics brand Ben Nye, which gained cult status off-stage for its Banana Powder, has filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy to protect itself from talc contamination lawsuits.
- The Estée Lauder Companies launched Clinique on Amazon, marking the conglomerate’s first official endeavor onto the marketplace site through Amazon’s premium beauty storefront program.
- Rare Beauty announced it has gained certification from Leaping Bunny for its cruelty-free policies.
In the headlines:
- Josie Maran expands her eponymous, 17-year-old company’s offerings with a foray into hair care. The new formulas will utilize the same hero ingredients as the brand’s skin care and cosmetics, including argan oil, vitamin C and coconut-derived surfactants.
- Community commerce company Kiki announced it has raised $7 million in its initial funding round from a16z crypto and The Estée Lauder Companies’ New Incubation Ventures (NIV), among others.
- Jake Gyllenhaal is the face of Prada’s new fragrance, Luna Rossa Ocean. He’ll star in a three-part documentary centered around the brand’s Luna Rossa boat as part of the campaign.
- U.S. health officials believe that counterfeit Botox injections, all of which were administered in “nonmedical settings,” may have sickened individuals in several states, according to the CDC. Health officials are currently investigating.
- Charlotte Tilbury is entering the fragrance category with the launch of six fragrances inspired by emotions like “calm bliss” and “magic energy.” The perfumes were developed with fragrance house IFF.
Need a Glossy recap?
“The Hills” alum and influencer Whitney Port joins The High Confectionary as creative director. When many brands are releasing minis, Naturium is launching jumbo-sized versions of its bestselling products. RMS Beauty celebrates growth with a 360-degree marketing campaign. And Geske is raising global brand awareness. The Glossy beauty team tapped cosmetic chemist Laura Lam-Phaure for a listener Q&A.
