The model, businesswoman and former pop star has curated a limited edition range of makeup products for global beauty giant Estée Lauder, launched this week across the UK and US markets.
The move indicates that despite the waning power of celebrity endorsements for beauty and fragranceproducts in traditional advertising campaigns, there may still be scope for positioning celebrities as accessible, visible range curators, more in line with the personal approach used by beauty bloggers.
Authentic voice
Speaking of the launch, Jane Hertzmark Hudis, group president of Estée Lauder, portrayed Beckham very much in this light.
“To us, she’s a next-generation Estée: Authentic, an entrepreneur, wife, mother, fashion designer — and she’s a beauty maven,” the company head explained.
“She knows her style, her point of view and about the way she wants women to look, feel, act and be comfortable in their skin — but really have a great deal of glamour at the same time.”
Celeb curators, not endorsers
As the major traditional players in the cosmetics industry continue to hunt for ways to take back influence and communication power from the ever-popular group that is beauty bloggers, how to position celebrities remains a fluid and interesting topic of consideration.
“The right celebrity, used in the right way, can undoubtedly be a powerful brand asset. But using a celebrity is no guarantee of effective advertising; overall, there’s very little difference between the performance of ads with celebrities versus those without,” analysts from multinational research firm Millward Brown have previously said.
Estée Lauder’s use of Victoria Beckham in this collaboration suggests that rather than using celebrities in flat advertising campaigns - traditionally TV-centred with little consumer dialogue - the time has come for companies to start positioning celebs as part of the brands themselves.
Beauty blogger influence?
A key way this kind of positioning is able to be achieved in beauty is maximising social media’s impact. With the recent launch, Beckham centred these efforts on Instagram, where she announced the launch of the collaboration.
“I want to make women feel empowered, to feel sexy and confident. This makeup does that. I love to make women feel like the best version of themselves,” the model wrote on her Instagram feed.
In further confirmation of this positioning of herself as an accessible, authentic beauty voice, speaking to WWD.com, Beckham said, “I was very specific about what I wanted. It was about the must-have items that I felt everybody should have in their makeup bag, things that are really quite difficult to find because I know, I’ve searched.”