Allure Beauty App
Sure, it's a great magazine as magazines go. One of the beauty go-to's in the industry for sure. The annual Allure Beauty Awards have become a bit of a "thing" for the magazine, and for beauty brands, and for consumers of all things beauty. There's nothing like an endorsement from a beauty editor to peak interest in something new.
Every year, Allure magazine picks what it considers to be the best in beauty products across virtually every category you can imagine. The winners are announced via a big NYC press event and then published in a coveted copy of the magazine.
Brands that win see huge bumps in sales, almost immediately. For consumers, it's a great way to sift through the sea of hundreds of new items to get a sense of what to try. It's also Allure's biggest selling issue of the year ... so it's a win-win-win marketing score all around (the most you can ask for in marketing).
This past year, the Allure beauty awards have exploded into other avenues as well. For a long time, many brands have been putting their winning "seal" on their advertising and even on their packaging. C'mon, if you're going to win an award like this, then you better promote it, right?!
But this year, we saw the awards go even further as brands have taken out special advertising sections and even built in-store displays all around their winning products.
The best idea yet, in my book, is the new Allure Beauty App. Available at iTunes, this new app allows you to browse through all the award winners, learn about each of them, share information with your friends, and even find a store that sells that oh-so-special SKU.
As the magazine says, "it's like having a beauty editor in your bag!" Brilliant.
It's a great example of a brand that starts out with a winning idea ("hey, let's do an annual beauty awards"), and expands it into touchpoints (packaging, retail, mobile) to incorporate it into their consumers' lives, making it a much bigger experience.
Bravo! What's your experience? Jim.
Jim Joseph
President, Cohn & Wolfe North America
Author, The Experience Effect and The Experience Effect for Small Business
Professor, NYU