In this episode of Connected Thinking, Liv Kerr, our Account Director, sits down with Michael Edelmann, Chief Marketing Officer at 111SKIN. With experience spanning Gucci, Vogue, Balenciaga and The Business of Fashion, Michael brings a wealth of insight into what it takes to build a luxury brand.
Loved by celebrities & beauty artists globally, 111SKIN goes beyond products, expanding its brand universe across wellness, fashion and culture. In this conversation, they chat about:
→ Building a brand that balances exclusivity and attainability
→ Expanding community through experiences and education
→ Choosing the right strategies to elevate brand perception
→ Measuring ROI on physical activations and pop ups
...and lots more!
111SKIN sits at a luxury price point, yet your marketing often focuses on building community and making the brand feel accessible. How do you balance maintaining exclusivity while still democratising the brand?
When it comes to striking the balance between exclusivity and being more attainable, for me it really boils down to what it means to assemble a community. Community is a term that gets thrown around quite a bit nowadays, but a lot of brands and individuals still don't truly understand what it means. Essentially, a community is a group of like-minded individuals who share similar values and similar beliefs, and that is really at the heart of what I'm trying to build at 111SKIN.
No matter the price point, the brands that are succeeding nowadays are brands that build a universe around themselves. They build a lifestyle so that they can assemble those communities, and they create moments where these individuals want to connect with each other, not just with the brand. I think that's the most powerful way of marketing today.
There are also a lot of great lessons to be learned from luxury fashion and from the past. That's the reason brands like Gucci and Tom Ford have fragrances and eyewear. Those allow customers to buy into the dream, even if the ready-to-wear or the bag may not be as accessible to them. In a similar way for us at 111SKIN, you may not buy the Repair Serum as your first purchase, but you may treat yourself to an eye mask or a cleanser, which is just that little bit more attainable and still makes you feel part of our universe, and still makes you feel good about yourself.
Audiences increasingly want to connect with the brands they love in real life. What does the 111SKIN universe look like to you?
The universe of 111SKIN at its core is definitely beauty and wellness, but I also love to connect with fashion. 111SKIN has long-standing relationships with luxury fashion brands, by virtue of being backstage preparing the models for fashion shows, but also by virtue of working really closely with makeup artists.
For us, the makeup artist community are our influencers, in a way. They are tastemakers, they are super powerful, and they're gatekeepers because they work with incredible clients. Through these makeup artists, we get exposure to celebrities and A-listers.
On the other hand, we also lean quite a bit into fitness and wellbeing. We've worked on a lot of exciting partnerships with Alo Yoga, for example, where we activate together, and there's a fantastic brand called REVIV that does IV drips and IM shots. That allows us to build a more holistic world where wellbeing includes skincare, but also longevity.
It's no secret that 111SKIN is beloved by celebrities, with mainstream moments from Harry Styles and Charli XCX to name a few. How do you build that into your marketing strategy?
To the external world it always looks like we are working with a lot of endorsement deals and huge marketing budgets, but the reality is we are just blessed with a fantastic product. Ultimately, it's the product that travels. Tom Ford once said that you can have the best marketing, but if your product isn't great, no one will ever repurchase it.
For us, as I mentioned earlier, it's about having these makeup artists who might slip an eye mask into a celebrity's bag, or put it on while they're in glam. That's how we ended up having Harry Styles wear our Black Diamond eye mask on an Instagram post announcing his new single. That's the most powerful form of marketing and influence, and it feels that much more genuine. Nowadays everyone is so cognisant of the hashtag ad or the hashtag sponsored. If you have a fantastic product, you don't really need to rely on that as much.
111SKIN recently featured in the Netflix show Vladimir. Was that an organic mention or was it teed up?
Again, a completely organic mention. The makeup artist working on the show loves our product. Very often these makeup artists are incredible influencers. They speak with the producers and directors of the show, and if there is a moment in the storyline where skincare plays a role, that's how a moment like this can come to fruition. So no, that wasn't any form of paid product placement.
When those organic moments happen, how do you take them further?
That's definitely where marketing comes in, because we can amplify that story beyond that show moment or that celebrity's account. It's then up to our team to message it out far and wide. We rely on our organic social media channels, our email, our website, and we work really closely with press and media to get the news out there.
Wellness is evolving far beyond products, with experiences like masterclasses, treatments and educational events becoming part of the brand world. How do you see 111SKIN expanding its role in the broader wellness ecosystem to build brand loyalty?
I think experiences are really at the forefront of what is driving consumerism nowadays, even when it ties into product purchases. A lot of discovery still happens in store, and there are incredible experiences that we bring to life through skin consultations. We have fantastic skin-scanning devices that allow us to tailor routines, and we put eye masks on someone in store.
We also work with more than 100 five-star hotel partners, so you can find 111SKIN in some of the most prestigious hotels, like Mandarin Oriental, Aman and Four Seasons. Customers can really immerse themselves in the brand. They can get facials, they can get body treatments. That's really where you feel the core of our brand, because you're getting a fantastic service, but you also leave with visible results, so you get the benefits of all worlds.
And we're always looking at how we can enhance those experiences. At the moment we're working on a really exciting project involving music, because music, from a scientific point of view, has a lot of benefits and can drive our emotions. Do you want to feel energised after a facial, or do you want to feel relaxed? Music can play a big role in that.
Similarly, based on the partnerships I mentioned earlier, we worked with Alo on an event where there was an ice bath and a heat treatment involved, and we worked with REVIV to offer IV drips. All of these experiences champion beauty and wellness in a super experiential way.
Consumers are increasingly aware of ingredients, and that tactile, in-person experience of a product is a powerful driver of brand loyalty. How do you translate the joy and emotion of those in-real-life experiences to your digital strategy?
To me, there's still so much power in physical retail. A lot of discovery still happens in store, and we invest a lot of time and resources in education.
We always try to translate any physical activation into the digital world. Our core customer is incredibly digitally connected, but also travels a lot. So when we are activating in London, for example, we think about that. Last year during the summer we had a fantastic pop-up activation where we took a vintage repairs van around town. We sampled our products, but we also found ways to let the customer in New York or Shanghai feel part of that. We did that by working with influencers, for example, so they got to experience that pop-up and translate it to their audiences.
It's also about how you can create moments that naturally encourage anyone, even a passer-by, to capture it and message it out to their followers. In the case of the repairs van, we almost had these mini flash mobs where models would water the plants and clean the streets, because our idea was to dial up anything that has to do with repairs, since our bestseller, the product that launched the brand, is called the Repair Serum. Even someone who had never heard of 111SKIN but was passing by in that moment was curious about what was going on and taking snaps. So we always think about how to create in-real-life experiences that allow customers to engage and help us amplify it, and obviously we amplify it virtually on our end as well.
We're also in the process of building a really incredible loyalty community. We call them V1Ps, because 111 is part of our brand name. Even there, we're thinking through how we can get someone involved no matter if they're based in Dallas or Edinburgh. Maybe it's not a physical masterclass at Harrods, but a virtual masterclass with Eva and Dr Yannis, our co-founders.
111SKIN was founded by a doctor, triple board-certified no less. How does that shape the way the brand communicates compared to more traditional beauty brands?
It's such a blessing, to be honest. Based on what I was saying at the beginning, if you're trying to create a brand universe and assemble a community, individuals nowadays want to connect with humans. They want to know who's behind a brand. For us, Dr Yannis and Eva are the most powerful influencers in the world, because they bring such an element of credibility and trust.
Dr Yannis works with his patients day in, day out at his clinic at 111 Harley Street here in London. That feedback loop, the conversations he's having with patients and the concerns he comes across each day, informs our product development process. Each product is born out of a real patient need. We don't just sit there looking at market trends, analysing what could be the next big category. It's really driven by what our customers are looking for and how we can help them, which I think is a really important point of difference.
Dr Yannis didn't set out to launch a global skincare brand. He simply wanted to help his patients. And what a powerful way to help patients around the globe. I try to treat each customer as an extension of our patient community here in London. Each customer deserves care, and I want to make sure they make the most out of their skin.
Are there moments where having a medical founder allows you to approach content differently, through education or influencer collaborations, compared to other luxury brands?
Absolutely. It really allows us to bring the founders front and centre and use them as the voice of the brand, bringing that education and those insights on ingredients, while at the same time creating that lifestyle around the brand.
That's where Eva comes in, for example. She's really the voice of our customer. She rigorously tests the formulations, helps to improve them, and she can share that journey online as well, which is just super authentic.
The founders are ultimately the brand's star influencers. How does that play into your wider influencer strategy?
They definitely sit at the core of our influencer strategy, in a way. Around that, we build other KOLs, key opinion leaders, who are experts in their field.
I think we should really question what influence means nowadays. For me, influence means that someone brings trust and credibility and can speak in a credible way to a product or service. For us, as I mentioned earlier, that can include makeup artists, stylists, models, or experts in wellness and fitness. They bring an element of credibility that aligns with our scientific backing, but also with the universe we're trying to create.
As a luxury brand, breaking into the right retail environment is critical. What factors do you consider when deciding which retail spaces or partners are the right fit for 111SKIN?
Always coming back to: where is our customer? We are quite clear on who our target customer is and how we want to reach them, so it's about really understanding the nitty-gritty of a retailer's demographic, where the store is located and who comes through the door.
It's also about thinking again about your objective. Primarily with stores, people still think about conversion as the transaction concluding in the store, but some stores are really serving a purpose of discovery. There, you need to think about how to make the most of creating awareness for the brand and how to create a retail theatre where customers feel engaged, and then they might come to our website to transact, or go through Amazon or another online retailer. So I would summarise it as: always think about your objective, and the type of customer you're trying to attract.
What's your favourite 111SKIN product?
My favourite 111SKIN product is the Repair Serum, which is the product that launched the brand in 2012. It's still our global award-winning bestseller for a reason. I use it day in, day out.
Favourite book or podcast you'd recommend?
There's a fantastic podcast called The Cutting Room Floor, hosted by Recho Omondi. She's a fashion designer but also a really critical thinker, and she's interviewed Gwyneth Paltrow and many others in a very fascinating fashion. I'd recommend anyone watching this to listen to one of the latest episodes.
Best piece of advice you've received?
It would be: we don't know what we don't know. That is a piece of advice one of my friends and mentors, and at the time also a client, gave to me. Her name is Sinéad Burke, and she's a fantastic advocate for disability inclusion.
"We don't know what we don't know" always encourages me to be curious about the world and never make assumptions. If you've been working in an industry for many years, you can easily become a little bit of a know-it-all, but the world is moving so quickly and constantly evolving. So I really encourage myself to constantly listen and observe.
