The Marketing Bestie Podcast with zoeunlimited - I’m prettier, but nobody cares? (A Glossier Marketing Case Study)

Episode Date: November 27, 2025

How did Glossier mess up $1.8 billion of pretty privilege?🎁 5 years of social media + marketing knowledge: https://tapx.it/unlimitedyou-challenge✨Start your dream brand TODAY with a FREE shopify trial https://tapthe.link/zoeunlimitedshopifyLearn & Grow with me.💖 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zoeunlimited/💜 TikTok: http://www.tiktok.com/@zoeunlimited🖤 Listen on Apple & Spotify: http://apple.co/zoeunlimited https://open.spotify.com/show/0ZReedpR6Bf1kvHeKBuWY1🪭 All my outfits https://www.shopltk.com/explore/zoeunlimited👩🏻‍💻 LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/zoeunlimited🛒 Essentials https://www.amazon.com/shop/zoeunlimited📧 Business inquiries: [e-mail]👉use code ZOEUNLIMITED for 10% off ALL travels on Klook https://t.ly/aA76T//🕙Timestamps: 0:00 Intro3:10 Birth of gloss4:29 Success Factor 16:49 Success Factor 28:50 Success Factor 310:44 Success Factor 412: 31 Branding Misstep 114:14 Branding Misstep 216:20 Branding Misstep 318:18 Branding Misstep 4Marketing SOS

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How to influencer it girl glossy wipe away? It's $1.8 billion a pretty privilege. Glossier. Glossier. Glossier. Wow, I got a spicy three bag. I spent around $1,000 on glossier product. Already so obsessed.

Worst thing I've ever put on my face. I can give you dermatitis. You smell so bad. Ranted. Crashed. Racist. Racist. You know those girls that always look clean, their skin is always glowing, their lips are always glossed.

If that girl was a brand, it must be Glossier. At one point, they were everything. Ben out of Ben. Effortlessly glowy and gorgeous. On the face of Gigi Hadid, Olivia Rodriguez, Sidney Sweeney, 3.1 million cult-like Instagram fans, Darling of Vogue, L. Harper's Bazaar, you name it. Valued at $1.8 billion at its height. I'm wondering how Glacier is doing, it looks like it's doing pretty good.

But somehow, there is still a way to mess everything up. I hate Glossi. Gross. So patchy. It smells like straight vodka. This is not bad. How exactly did Glossier screw up more than $1.8 billion a pretty privilege? What happened to Glossier? I don't hear anyone talk about it anymore.

And I'm gonna cry! That's exactly the mystery we've uncovered today. But not only that, As your marketing bestie, who graduated top 1% UCLA business economics with a background in marketing, we're going to explore how a pretty package can still fail you if you have a terrible brand. And how you, yes you, no matter if you have pretty privilege or not, can build a successful brand to help you down your career. Whether you wear glossy braggia or not, marketing principles can make or break you. Because you may see yourself one way, but how does your dream college, dream job, dream boy,

friend see you. That's the importance of brand and yes you have one. I'm creating the series to analyze pop culture influences from a marketing perspective because of the power of influence they have over a generation of young girls. I'm starting a newsletter soon and if you want to be the first to join this exclusive community of deeper dives, trends, insights. Make sure you join the early link in the description it's completely free. But what is not free are the caution branding mistakes of Glossier. What mistakes led to its decline and how could they have been avoided? Let's find out. But first, how did marketing turn a blog into a $1.8 billion brand? A 25-year-old Emily Weiss was working at Vogue when she started a beauty blog into the gloss in 2010.

She realized that while there were other popular fashion blogs at the time, nobody was covering makeup and skin in the same way, aka a shortage of supply, hence an opportunity. Because of her job, wife spent time with fashion models and other beauty insiders on photo shoots and interviewed them about their makeup and skincare routines. And landed interviews with Kim Kardashian, Carly Claus, Jen Atkin, and more. As traffic began to flow, so did advertisements. Attracting beauty giants like Longcombe, Cotty, Estee Lauder, Harvard Business School reported in a case study that into the gloss annual advertising revenue reached $5 million. So what was way more valuable were two things.

Emily Weiss's master education in the beauty business and the built-in audience of the blog. Millennial and Gen Zie women who were neglected by many large beauty brands focused on older customers. Hence, Glossier had fans before even launching. 13,000 followers without a single product. Speaking of which, we are ready to talk about the first out of the four years. success factors that turned this blog into a $1.8 billion brand. We love. Oh my gosh, it smells like those little Asian candies. Product. No matter how great marketing is, marketing is just a package, hence why they're not doing too hot right now. A product needs to be good enough to

market itself in order for a brand to be sustainable. This goes for your personal brand, the brand of an artist, and makeup. Glossiers launch a four core skincare product, from $12 to $26 hit three birds in one stone. First, the prices were above drugstore competitors, but below prestige beauty brands, creating a non-competed niche on its own. It's much easier to get a $12 Glossiate balm.com than it is to get a $3,000 Gucci handbag.

Second, the timing could not be more perfect. If we were to talk about marketing, we have to talk about the market, which means demand and supply. Glossier was launched in 20,000. launched in 2014, the era of high glam. We're talking about full covered foundation, the contour craze, heavy, heavy lip makeup.

Instead of being a latecomer to such an overly saturated high glam beauty market, Emily Weiss saw the underserved community for bare minimal makeup. The skin first, makeup second philosophy began millennials and Genzi's craze for natural minimalist beauty. It gives you the bare minimum folks, like the bare minimum. AKA Glossier being the starter of trends.

And they never ever look like they're wearing too much makeup. We are one voice among many and that's the way we want it. Hence, products like Boy Brow riding the trend of Cara Delavine's eyebrows, light skin tint milk jelly cleanse were a smash. And because third, the products themselves were very aesthetically appealing in its signature pink bubble wrap pouch with a Ziploc top. Even though some bestsellers like Thebomb.com are just very, Vaseline but in a prettier pink package.

They could not only sell four times the price of Vaseline, but also sell out. Why was I buying all of this fragranced Vaseline for like $15? Why? It's all marketing, babe. Glossier. Dream come true. These are so cute. It smells so good.

You're kidding me. You're not just buying a product now. You are buying a brand, an aesthetic, a lifestyle, and aspiration. The best compliment I've ever received is that I always look, put together. Glossie was as much about his products as it was about the aspiration of being a glossier girl. And who is that, you may ask? Oh, like, I really like your lip color. Like, it's just like natural and it's light and it's like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like.

Starting with the visual brand of the millennial pink. That actually became the color of the year in 2017, which perfectly tied into the rage about the hashtag girl boss. the pink iPhone, Kylie Cosmetics, and of course, key player Glossier, with the perfect story of founder, Emily Weiss, girl bossing and building her brand from scratch, although some may argue differently regarding her alleged privilege background. Emily Weiss was on the hills, she was super intern Emily, she would work at Teen Vogue two days a week and then one day a week at Chanel.

So she was really working her ass off. Regardless, it was an aspirational story for young women who follow Emily Wise and Glossier because of the identity they portray an effortlessly cool girl with an effortlessly naturally beautiful face and body living her effortlessly girl boss best life now what's this attainable okay when i sell my business i want the best tax and investment advice i want to help my kids and i want to give back to the community ooh then it's the vacation of a lifetime of office has a forever setter. An IG Private Wealth advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business,

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Tumblr girl was out and glossier girl was in. Don't use all that makeup. You're beautiful, glossyy, he said. But you should have perfect skin feather eyebrows and a marble bathroom filled with natural light. You could have spent $3.29 on some vassling, but no, cool girls use glossybomb.com because the products are the memberships to an exclusive community of glossy girls. You may not be them, but here's how to get their look.

She medium tan too. Hence, third community was one of the secret formulas to their viral success. $250 billion. We're building an ecosystem. really community driven. And I said community and quotations because this is also the taking time bomb leading to their downfall, as we will soon cover. When Glossy first began, it did a phenomenal job in creating for its audience. For instance, they asked in a blog post, quote, What is your dream face wash? That small question got a big response. And iterated more than

40 formulations before finally landing on the final product. It was not selling to sell. It was selling to serve. eye safe, suitable for every skin type, no gritty things, more balmy, soothing, oil-free. But at the same time, Glossier was becoming this hard-to-get, Clicky community, a Pretty Boss Babes. They were one of the first brands to leverage influencers to a massive scale. In the summer of 2016, the company created its first official rep program, and they noticed tons of sales were coming from people sharing their discount code in their Instagram bios. And because of this Halo, Glossier has as the...

it girl brand, more and more girls were dying to become their ambassadors, even if unpaid. Because if they post themselves in Glossier, they could very much be the lucky chosen ones to be used as free marketing on Glossier's own Instagram page, which to any young girl will be the coolest thing, even if their image rights are completely overlooked and they are not paid a single cent. Who cares? Glossier is cool. I've loved Glossier for as long as I can remember. But imagine if you pass by a garbage truck and that garbage disposal company took a photo view and used that for free in their advertising, you probably won't be so delighted. Why? Because Glossier had a positive for brand association.

Dream come true. Emily Wise being the it girl face of Glossier was just the start. Glossier being the child of online media spread its legacy via social media influencers. All the lifestyle and beauty YouTube girlies were raving about it. Huge fan, huge fan, I need to repurchase super bounce. Oh, how I love it. Absolutely love it. The hottest celebrities were huge fans of it. Before the world knows it, Glossier became an empire of it girls. It became the definition of the beauty standard. In combination with scarcity marketing, each drop was allowed immediately and easily have waiting list as long as 10,000 people, making them perceived even more as this exclusive, hard-to-get-hurt-get, hot commodity.

My god, did bomb.com just leak on our site? To keep this aura of exclusivity going, they limited the presence to online and DTC only. Never cared to enter Sephora or Alta and will only sell in selective countries. This brand association of elite insider versus outsider natural beauty worked so well for Glossier until it didn't. Thus, we are finally ready to talk about the ugly reality behind the gloss. What were the four avoidable branding mistakes that led to its decline? And how Glossicate is the cautionary tale of how the crown of an it girl cool brand could tip over just like that.

Sales are extremely disappointing. And although we're talking about marketing here, we also need to understand the behind-the-scenes psychology of what led to its misstep after misstep. Thus, a central problem that I didn't really see anyone online talking about. is first overvaluation in the modern startup world where it seems very sexy to talk about how much capital is raised too much capital and overvaluation of a brand is actually a curse as the world touted how glossy it went from a blog to at 1.8 billion dollar unicorn startup that successfully raised 8.4 million dollars then 24 million dollars then 100 million dollars to eventually more than 265 million dollars in total, that's not just free charity money, babe. It's a lot of up-front money

expecting an even bigger return. Hence, inflating Glossese valuation to over $1.8 billion. When they raised another $100 million in 2019, guess how much net profit they were making the year before? $14 million in revenue and only $3.3 in actual profit. But at this time, they already raised $150 million and were expected to be a $1.2 billion dollar company. It's as if you just learned the alphabet but were awarded with a bachelor's degree and a dissertation to complete in four days. That's a lot of pressure to grow and expand. Hence, that's all glossy I wanted to do, expand. And that pressure manifested in marketing and slowly made them lose their brand

uniqueness, aka what got them all this investment intention in the first place. They were so busy expanding that they forgot to adapt. Disappointed. No, they must have reformulated or something because it absolutely smells ranted. Blends almost into nothing. I feel like I look like I've been punched in both eyes by my tax. And that's exactly when. Second, aspiration turned into alienation.

This morning I woke up beautiful again and craving attention. so I decided to make some bitches mad from scratch. As a brand built from a literal blog community, without the people, there will not be glossier. Yet, the brand derives so much value from excluding the people to create its cool factor. From the scarcity tactics to limited shade ranges to selling the dream of an effortlessly beautiful airbrushed version of natural beauty,

soon realized to be unattainable by the people. None of it was real. This exclusivity made the early, Poor dye her fans of Glossie began to feel alienated and started drifting farther away from it. Because as you remember, the only reason that someone will pay four times for a vascular, but in slightly prettier packaging, is the brand association and feeling as if they are part of this cool girl club. But while busy expanding, Glossie forgot to take the time to build a strong internal foundation ready for this expansion. Hence the alleged horror stories of hostile workplace, hygiene issues clickiness to straight-up racism surfaced.

Anti-blackness within the company and began to rot the brand from inside out. It's as if glossy fans were slapped in the face. For the first time ever, they were forced to look inside the pretty packaging of the cool girl brand to only see the ugliness of a disingenuous brand. The cool girl turned into an ugly, mean girl. After that expose where we found out that she was essentially only hiring like white clones of her. Ew.

And that began the decline of cool in Glossier's brand. Even though founder Emily Wise stepped down in 2022, the coolness of the brand Glossier was vanishing long before that. I don't hear anyone talk about anymore. And timing was no longer on Glossier's side because third, The products were no longer innovative, and some may even argue, declined in quality. This is my old one and this is the one I just got. This is really bad.

I have a huge problem with this product. It's not sour. This is disgusting of you. $20 and you can barely even see it's there. At the time of launch, Glacier pioneered the Clean Girl trend and dominated a huge surging market. While a huge win, building a brand is like growing a plant. just because if flowered once doesn't mean you can stop watering it. But that's exactly what happened with Glossier.

As minimalist beauty became mainstream, they no longer had a unique selling point, hence a competitive advantage. Yet brands like Rode new sticks, also killing the Clean Girl look and Fenty by Rihanna, solving the problem of a lack of shade ranges. Glossier has not released anything extremely groundbreaking in the past few years.

But with the pressure to expand, after raising so much capital, there's a higher need than ever to keep their numbers looking glossy. While simultaneously facing the negative backlashes of being exposed, Glossy lost their cool as the cool girl and became a little desperate. Trying to regain relevancy, they launched Glossy play, which was everything the brand is not. An intensely colorful and opaque makeup line with an underwhelming response both for the formulas and excessive packaging. It's as if stepping on its own toe. Glossier now confused its audiences by being confused by its own identity as a clean girl.

But guess what? A real cool girl, a trendsetter, is not confused about who she is. Glossier seems to confuse expansion with chasing after whatever might work. Instead of pushing forward innovations in its original clean girl space. RIP, Glossier play, but the final blow. Fourth, missed retail expansion really set them back. As more funding came in, all Glossie wanted to do was to expand and grow. That's great, but at the wrong place and wrong time.

Lossie has always been known as a digital first brand. Their direct-to-consumer model worked really well and cut out the middlemen such as Sephora and Ulta. But now injected with more than $100 million of capital, they want to take a bigger slice of the pie in retail as well. by expanding their retail brick and mortar stores during no better time than the pandemic. A time that absolutely everyone was in the mood to risk her lives shopping for lip gloss. Along with its once-dihard fans falling out of love with the brand after so many scandals, Gen Z's taste dominance that makes its unattainable natural beauty outdated, its staling product formulas, is Glossier truly doomed?

Not necessarily. leadership has several change of hands. There are a few rebranding strategies they are doing well. First, the Olivia Rodriguez collaboration was exactly what they needed. To reconnect with the Gen Z and even Gen Alpha demographic. You are good. And to stay culturally relevant and cool again through associations. Which is why I don't really understand why that ambassadorship ended.

Before that long-term association was even established. Why are we not working with Olivia Rodrigo to bring back Glossier plate? It's almost the perfect bridge between the hero products and place. How this isn't already a campaign image is beyond me. Second, the entries to Sephora and Nelta. Yes, the margins will be lower. Yes, that will make them less exclusive. But Glossier is no longer the cool girl too good for everyone now.

By entering the shelves, they have a broader channel to reach their targeted audiences, people who are already shopping for beauty products, which is way cheaper than dragging people to their own website or physical stores to make a sale. On top of the fact that Sephora is now the playground for the next gen of shoppers. But what Glossier really needs is to rebuild that trust again as a community-based brand. Either own up the exclusivity or actually commit to inclusive intentions by more than just presenting an inclusive image. The burns of an off-brand moment could take years to repair. But through consistent actions of showing up for the community of women,

continually innovating within their brand identity of skin, first, will take them a much longer way than just expanding for the sake of expanding. Let me know if you think Glacier can come back or it's just a brand in the past. This is your marketing bestie, Zoe Unlimited. Episodes are available on all podcast networks, Apple, Spotify, YouTube. Share this episode with someone you love. Hope you have an amazing and beautiful day and I'll see you next week.