How Murad is using Instagram to refresh its brand

SKIN CARE companies are struggling to keep up with their customers in the Asia Pacific (APAC).

The market has a strong appetite for good products, but customers are younger, smarter, and digital-savvy. For companies, catering to their customers’ needs with good products is the easy part — making an impression on them and engaging with them is the challenge.

It’s why so many of them are now looking to transform themselves, upgrade their digital capabilities, and really just align with their customers in a way that is authentic to their brand and yet intuitive and intelligent.

In an exclusive interview with Tech Wire Asia, Murad APAC Sales and Education Manager Katy Bacon explained how the company is making an effort to reinvent itself and provide better experiences to its customers in the region.

“Murad’s products are “clinical but cool”, it’s how we see ourselves and our products in today’s market. This idea, unique and refreshing, is what will drive the new experience we create in the digital space.”

The company is looking to overhaul its website — and expects to reveal a new look by June this year. However, Bacon’s team points out that there’s more to the site than just a change in design.

“Through our new website, we hope to provide more help, support, and advice to our customers, and really take them on an interactive digital journey that wows them.”

Discussing the project in detail revealed that the company is working on providing more educational content, which seems fair given the emphasis that Murad places on being “clinical”.

What’s “cool”, though, is how the company’s teams collaborate to create the corporate guidebook (internally referred to as their “vibe book”) to wow customers and draw in new audiences:

“We’re getting much of our insights from Instagram. As a brand, we’re paying more attention to Instagram which has helped engagement shoot up by 63 percent in the recent past, but it’s also helping us better understand our audiences.

“Over the past seven months, our communications, branding, and marketing teams have worked on creating our vibe book, rich with insights from our Instagram page and other digital platforms that will drive the creation of exciting marketing and branding collaterals in the future.”

Given the company’s recent success with Instagram, it’s no surprise that Murad has recently started engaging with a range of influencers both globally and across the region — and hopes to do more with them in the coming year.

Murad’s focus on Instagram might seem quite light from a strategy standpoint at first, especially for those who aren’t up to date with the cosmetics industry.

The reality, however, is that it’s an incredibly smart idea to base branding decisions on cues from the company’s Instagram account.

According to a study Insta-branding: The impact of Instagram on the orthodoxies of traditional branding published by Ogilvy earlier this year, 80 percent of Instagram users voluntarily connect with a brand on the platform and 72 percent of Instagram users have made a purchase after seeing an item featured on the platform.

In fact, Ogilvy’s analysis suggests that Instagram is the most engaging of all social platforms.

Ten times as many people engage with brands on Instagram than on Facebook, 54 times as many people engage with brands on Instagram than on Pinterest, and 84 times as many people engage with brands on Instagram than on Twitter.

“What we’re seeing through social media is the democratization of the beauty industry. The customer is becoming the marketer,” Glossier Founder and CEO Emily Weiss told Ogilvy.

“She’s electing which brands win by posting what she’s using on social media – whether she has 200 followers, 2,000 or 2 million. Your opinion as a woman in beauty has never been more valuable.”

The knowledge Weiss holds is the strategy Murad is leveraging to grow its business and take it into new and interesting areas in the market.

With Bacon’s team bringing their new vibe book to life, creating new digital assets, and focusing on doing more with influencers in the region — the future looks “clinical but cool” for Murad.

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