Though Victoria Beckham’s “posh” taste is iconic, for her beauty brand’s newest launch, she turned to her fans.
Victoria Beckham Beauty’s community is made up of 456,000 Instagram followers, many of whom voted on the brand’s latest launch: its third shade of its Bitten Lip Tint, in Amour, a nude peach. They also named the shade. “I’ve always viewed beauty as a conversation starter, from recommending products to friends to getting inspiration from film and art. This is an extension of that conversation for me,” Beckham told Glossy.
In October 2019, when the brand launched the first Bitten Lip Tint in Bisou, a deep berry shade, it was planned to be the sole shade of the product. “I was like, ‘It’s not a gloss. It’s not actually a stain.’ It wears really well, and it’s transfer-proof. Sometimes you innovate and it misses the mark, because people don’t understand. But this one resonated; it became a hit. About six months after we launched, we started getting requests for additional shades.” In February of 2020, the brand took customers on a virtual lab visit via Instagram, where they started to share their opinions via comments on the second shade, which became Cherie, a rosy pink — and what would ultimately become the third shade, too.
“Now, Cherie sells three-times as much as Bisou,” said Sarah Creal, Victoria Beckham Beauty’s co-founder and CEO. “So the whole thing is just like, as Victoria jokes: Give the people what they want, what they really, really want.”
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Increasingly, fans of brands are proving eager to get involved in product development, to feel like they’re a part of the brand itself. “I’m often inspired by the customers I meet and hear from. They are what motivates me to keep this all going. It’s always most important for me to create products that are authentically me, but I view my community as a sounding board. When I come up with a new idea, I love to put it out there and get their feedback,” Beckham said.
“Out of the full Victoria Beckham Beauty range, I have to say Bitten Lip Tint is probably the most unique product,” Beckham said. “It has this incredible sheer gel texture that hydrates and nourishes lips, but dries down to a semi-matte finish and stays put all day. It’s a subtle tint that enhances your natural lip tone, so every shade looks incredible on everyone.”
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For the launch of Amour, the brand selected 50 of its most engaged fans, based on Instagram comments and DMs, to receive the new product and a video message from Beckham. “We are calling [the 50 fans] ‘The VBB Collective’ and giving them a deeper dive behind the scenes of Amour. It only made sense that they’d be the first to try our new shade since they helped develop it,” Beckham said.
The responses from the Collective have been emotional. Creal referenced a letter in which a fan wrote, “I’ve been the biggest Victoria Beckham fan since I was a kid… I am so thankful that a brand like Victoria Beckham beauty would send little me a new release.” Creal said that, with the Collective, the brand is “cultivating a testing community.”
“We don’t have any hard and fast plans at this point, but we just we love it. It’s fun for everybody,” she said,
Though Beckham called the brand’s Posh Lipstick one of the “most personal products I’ve ever launched,” Lip Tint is her “easy, everyday lip.” She wears Amour with the brand’s liner, Lip Definer in shade 02. “It is completely foolproof and effortless. I actually can apply it without even using a mirror. And I know it won’t smudge or bleed throughout the day, even under my mask,” she said.
